Sturgis murmured an apology. McCabe turned back to Tasco. ‘Tommy, did you manage to track down Goff’s landlord?’

‘Yeah. Guy named Andrew Barker. Lives downstairs in the same building she lived in. It’s a six-unit over on Brackett. Number 342. Barker told me Goff’s apartment sits right above his on the second floor. Also says he hasn’t seen her in a while. Thought she was on vacation. I asked him if her mail was piling up. He said no.’

‘You check with the post office?’

‘Yes. That’s who I was talking to when you and Maggie got back. Goff submitted a hold-mail request to start Saturday, December twenty-fourth. Deliveries scheduled to resume this Monday.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Yeah. I told Barker we were investigating a possible homicide and that we’d be sending the techs over to take a look at her apartment. Guy seemed kind of excited about that. Anyway, he said he’d be there to let them in and that he hoped nothing bad happened to Lainie. That’s what he called her, Lainie. I said we didn’t know yet.’

‘He’ll figure it out soon enough,’ said McCabe. ‘At least he will if he watches TV. Any luck with her cell phone?’

‘Yeah,’ said Brian Cleary. ‘I worked on that. She uses Verizon.’ He glanced at his notebook and read out the number. ‘Number’s 555-4390. I got a subpoena and asked the company for a record of all her calls, incoming and outgoing, for the past three months. Also for access to voice mail messages for the last thirty days. I told them it was urgent. Supervisor there said they’d get it together, have it for me in the morning. Asked me to fax over a copy of the subpoena. I did.’

‘Good.’

‘Got something else, too.’ Cleary was hunched forward in his chair, his foot tapping nervously on the floor. McCabe had high hopes for the young detective. He saw Cleary as a throwback to the Irish cops of thirty and forty years ago. McCabe’s father’s generation. Smart and aggressive with a wise-guy cockiness that reminded McCabe of the young Jimmy Cagney. Made it, Ma! Top of the world! He looked a little like Cagney, too. Short, maybe five-eight or five-nine, with reddish blond hair and a face full of freckles. Cleary had been a bit of a brawler as a kid. Until his old man put a stop to it. Told young Brian if he enjoyed beating people up so much, he’d be better off doing it inside a boxing ring instead of in schoolyards. Turned out to be a pretty good welterweight. Won a bunch of bouts at the Portland Boxing Club. Even thought about turning pro, then thought better of it. He joined the department instead.

‘I found the head of HR on the Palmer Milliken Web site. Woman named Beth Kotterman. Called her at home. Asked her if anyone at PM would know about Goff’s vacation plans. She said yeah, she would. Seems all staff at Palmer Milliken have to let the office know where they’ll be on vacation in case there’s an emergency.’

‘A legal emergency?’ asked McCabe.

Cleary shrugged. ‘I guess. She asked me why we wanted to know. I told her Goff’s car was found on the pier and we thought something bad might have happened to her. She dropped everything and went to the office to check her files. I guess she lives nearby, ’cause she called back a few minutes later. Said Goff was away for two weeks, returning next Monday. Her last day in the office was Friday, December twenty-third.’

‘Two weeks ago.’

‘Yeah. That’s why nobody reported her missing. She had reservations starting the twenty-fourth at a place called the Bacuba Spa and Resort on Aruba. Bacuba on Aruba.’

‘Traveling alone?’

‘I think so. At least she wasn’t sharing a room. I called the resort, and they had her down as a single.’

‘Place sounds expensive.’

‘It is. Twelve hundred bucks a night. When she didn’t show, they charged her credit card two nights as a penalty. I checked with Visa, and other than the penalty charge the card hasn’t been used since the twenty-second, when there was a charge for sixteen dollars and fifty-two cents from the Jan Mee Restaurant on St John Street.’

‘Is Kotterman still at the office?’

‘She said she was going home, but we should feel free to call her if there was anything else we needed.’

‘You still have her number?’ asked McCabe.

Cleary wrote it down on a piece of paper. McCabe glanced at it and then crumpled it up. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘The timing’s a gift. It gives us back our chance to check alibis. Whoever killed her had to have grabbed her between the time she left her office on the twenty-third and before she was supposed to get on her flight to Aruba. Did you find out anything about her travel plans?’

Cleary shook his head no.

McCabe turned to Sturgis. ‘Carl, I want you to find out what airport she was leaving from, what flight she was supposed to be on, and if she ever checked in.’

‘Think he might have grabbed her at the airport?’ asked Tasco.

McCabe shrugged. ‘Let’s find out.’

Sturgis didn’t move. McCabe figured it was because, as a senior detective, he resented being asked to do what he considered routine clerical work. Tough shit. A lot of being a detective, senior or not, consisted of nothing more than routine clerical work.

‘Like now, Carl,’ said McCabe.

Sturgis finally nodded, got up, and left. He passed Maggie on his way out the door without saying a word.

‘What got into him?’ she asked.

‘Don’t ask.’

‘Okay.’ Maggie rejoined the others at the table and sat down. ‘Hester doesn’t know anything.’

‘You’re sure.’

‘I’m sure. I poked, I prodded, I pleaded. All he knows is what he told Vodnick down at the pier.’

McCabe filled Maggie in on what she’d missed. After that he sat for a long minute piecing the investigation together in his mind.

Tasco broke the silence. ‘Okay. Where do we go from here?’

‘You’re going to Brackett Street,’ said McCabe. ‘I want you and Brian to round up as many warm bodies as you can. That includes Fraser when he gets here and Bill ’n’ Will when they finish checking out the assault. Split into teams. Make sure everyone has a copy of her Palmer Milliken bio picture and start banging on doors. You know the drill. Start with the other tenants in Goff’s building, then fan out to include surrounding buildings on Brackett and then the neighborhood. Wake people up if you have to. Include any small businesses she may have patronized. Dry cleaners. Convenience stores. Whatever. It’s not that late. Some may still be open.’

Maggie looked at the pictures again. ‘Let’s not ignore the obvious. Goff would’ve attracted men like flies,’ she said. ‘If she had a regular boyfriend, we need to bring him in and grill him. Maybe this whole thing was nothing more than a lovers’ spat that got out of hand.’

‘Doesn’t fit the MO,’ said McCabe. ‘Abusive boyfriends are usually a little more direct in their approach than neat little holes in the back of the neck, and they don’t leave quotations from the Bible. Still, you’re right, we ought to check it out. Tom, see if any of the neighbors can give you names or descriptions of current or former sexual partners.’

‘Could be somebody she dumped recently,’ said Cleary. ‘Somebody who maybe wasn’t too happy about it and decided to take it out on her. We’ll also check to see if anyone other than Goff was seen driving the Beemer. That’s a car people would notice. And remember.’

Tasco’s droopy bloodhound face was looking even more worried than usual. ‘Y’know, we’re not going to be able to cover all this stuff tonight.’

Maybe I should start calling him Deputy Dawg, thought McCabe. ‘I understand,’ he said. ‘Just get started and keep at it until something turns up. Also send some of the uniforms to start knocking on doors down at the Fish Pier.’

‘Okay, I’ll have a team take a whack at it,’ said Tasco, ‘but you gotta remember we’re talking about a commercial area here. Empty at this hour. Probably empty when the guy drove in with the body. Could be empty all weekend.’