Bowman ignored the sarcasm. ‘A couple of reasons. Starting with your assumption Quinn actually saw the murder take place –’

‘Not a bad assumption, Scotty,’ Maggie interjected. She was leaning against the door, arms folded across her chest, the photos of Quinn still in one hand. ‘A knife to the back of the neck is a pretty specific detail.’

‘It is, Detective Savage.’ Bowman laced the last two words with a heavy dose of his own sarcasm. ‘But isn’t it at least possible Quinn only saw the body after the fact? A naked woman. Dead. With a small wound in her neck. Don’t you think seeing that might’ve freaked her out enough to push her into making up the rest? Hallucinating it. Or imagining it. Or whatever the hell else you call what schizophrenics do when they’re stressed.’ Bowman looked pleased with his hypothesis.

McCabe shrugged. ‘Slightly tortured logic, but I suppose it’s possible.’

‘Oh yeah? Tortured in what way?’

‘Well, if that’s how it happened, where, exactly, is the killer while your schizophrenic is discovering the body? Hiding in a closet? Wandering around outside in the cold, waiting for her to finish freaking out so he can go back up and collect the remains? Or maybe he’s just over at the Crow’s Nest having a beer? Like I said, possible. Just not very likely.’

Bowman sighed in reluctant agreement. ‘Okay. But even if we assume Abby did catch the killer in the act, even then he probably didn’t see her face.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Maggie. ‘She saw his face. Why wouldn’t he see hers?’

‘Because,’ Bowman announced, ‘she was wearing a mask.’ He smiled with grim satisfaction, like an athlete savoring a meaningless point scored in the last seconds of a losing effort.

Maggie gave him a questioning look. ‘What kind of mask?’

‘A cold weather ski mask. Y’know, the kind that covers your face with holes cut out for the eyes, nose, and mouth. It was blue. Sort of an imitation Spider-Man design. She was still wearing it when she came to the station.’

What if Quinn was wearing a mask? McCabe thought about the implications of that as Maggie and Bowman continued their back-and-forth.

‘She was wearing this mask because . . . ?’ asked Maggie.

‘She was out jogging that night. The winds on the backshore can be brutal on bare skin, and I guess it was part of her gear. Anyway, when she passed the Markhams’ cottage –’

‘That’s the crime scene?’

‘Yeah. As she passed she saw candlelight in one of the windows. Since it’s one of her houses –’

‘What do you mean, her houses?’

‘Abby makes a few bucks keeping an eye on some of the summer cottages for the owners. She has keys to all of them. This was one of them. According to Lori Sparks at the Nest, she takes the responsibility seriously. I guess that’s why she went in to investigate.’

McCabe’s eyes, narrowed almost to slits, bored in on Bowman. ‘Wouldn’t she have taken the mask off when she went inside?’

‘I don’t think so. She had it on when she got here, and she kept it on. I couldn’t tell who she was, and I had to ask her twice to take it off. She finally did, but only reluctantly, and even then she wouldn’t let go of it. I think she saw it as some kind of whatchamacallit, a talisman or something.’

McCabe’s mind played with the possibilities. If Abby was wearing a mask when she saw the murder, if the killer couldn’t see her face, as Bowman suggested, it changed the dynamic of what they were doing. ‘You’re sure Sonny Cates didn’t tell the searchers why they were looking for Quinn?’ he asked. ‘He didn’t say anything about her witnessing a murder?’

‘No,’ said Bowman. ‘He couldn’t have. Like I told you, he didn’t know that himself. All I told Cates was that Quinn was missing and we needed to find her. In fact, that’s all Daniels knew till we went to pick you up off the boat.’

Okay, that was good. ‘How about her mother and the people at the Crow’s Nest?’

‘Same thing. I just asked them if they knew where Abby was, they said no. Travis Garmin told me to try her cell number. He knew it by heart. We did. Got no answer.’

McCabe walked to the window and peered out at the dark street. Snow was beginning to fall. Small hard flakes, not the fat fluffy ones he preferred. He let the idea of the mask perk around in his brain for a minute or two. Clearly they had to find Quinn ASAP, either here or on the mainland. At the same time, they didn’t want to put Quinn’s life in danger by letting the killer know who it was who had barged in on the murder. He thought about classifying Abby as a confidential police informant, a CI. That way they could legally keep her identity secret pretty much indefinitely, or at least until the discovery phase of a trial, if this thing ever got that far.

McCabe’s only problem was that this particular CI was missing, and it was going to be a hell of a lot harder to find her if they couldn’t tell anyone who they were looking for. No. Formal CI status wouldn’t work. They had to play it both ways. Tell people who they were looking for when they had to, but under no circumstances tell anyone why. At least Bowman hadn’t screwed that up yet.

McCabe took out his cell and tapped in Starbucks’s number. The PPD’s resident computer brain, Starbucks’s real name was Aden Yusuf Hassan. A Somali kid, he’d arrived in Portland back in 2000, in the city’s first wave of Sudanese and Somali refugees fleeing genocide in their own lands. When he started working for the department a couple of years later, the cops dubbed him Starbucks because of his addiction to strong coffee. The name stuck. Starbucks had never touched a computer in his native country, but he learned fast. He was a natural. One of the best McCabe had ever seen.

His mother picked up on the third ring. ‘I’m afraid Aden is not at home, Sergeant,’ she said in heavily accented English. ‘He’s out for the evening with a friend.’

McCabe thanked her, said he hoped he hadn’t woken her up, and tried Starbucks’s cell. ‘Yes, Sergeant.’ Starbucks was shouting over loud music. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘Sorry to break up your night on the town,’ McCabe shouted, ‘but I need you to get over to 109 now.’

‘Oh.’ Disappointment in his voice. ‘Okay.’ Pause. ‘That’s fine.’ The voice brightened up. ‘I’ll have to apologize to my friend and take her home first.’

‘Apologize for me, too.’

‘I will, but not to worry, Sergeant, the job comes first. What can I do for you?’

‘I’m having three photos of a woman e-mailed to you. When you get to the office, take the one where she looks old and fat. Photoshop about thirty pounds off of her. Then take the other two and add maybe five years. Could you hear all of that?’

‘Yes, Sergeant,’ Starbucks shouted back. ‘I hear you very well.’

‘Good. When you’re done, send the photos to Cleary’s computer.’

‘Is he at 109?’

‘He will be soon.’

Maggie started to ask a question. McCabe held up a finger, signaling her to wait. He called Cleary.

‘Hey, boss, you solve the murder yet?’ Nearly one in the morning and Cleary was still full of beans and ready to take on the world. That was good. McCabe needed somebody aggressive on this.

‘Not yet,’ McCabe told him. ‘The canvass turn up any results?’

‘Not yet either. We’re still working it.’

‘Tell Tommy I’m pulling you off.’

‘Yeah?’ Cleary sounded surprised. ‘Why? Whaddaya need?’

McCabe filled him in on everything they had learned so far, including the fact that Quinn couldn’t identify the killer and that the killer might not be able to identify Quinn.

‘Does the bad guy know she couldn’t ID him?’

‘No. Which is why we need to find her before he does. As quick as we can. Without letting people know why we’re looking, and without using her name any more than we have to. Otherwise we could have another corpse on our hands.’

‘Jesus,’ said Cleary, ‘this is all kinda weird.’