He holstered his weapon and ran down the steps. Maggie was lying in the snow at the bottom. He could see a small red circle slowly expand across the right side of her sweatshirt just above the black of her holster. Her .45 was still in her two hands. She was trying to sit up. Cupping the back of her head in one hand, he took her weapon, engaged the safety, and stuffed it in his coat pocket. Then he eased her down on her back, her head on the snow. Keeping his own .45 pointed in the direction of the shooter, he took out his cell and hit PPD911. That number took him straight through to Department Dispatch. Maggie looked up at him, conscious but in obvious pain. She tried to smile. ‘This is McCabe.’ He spoke fast. ‘Detective and civilian down. Both gunshot wounds. One thirty-one Summer Street. That’s one three one Summer. Civilian a possible 10–49. Send two ambulances and alert all units. Male suspect fleeing on foot, south from location toward Commercial Street. Tall. Dressed in a dark hooded coat.’

‘Wearing glasses,’ Maggie croaked.

‘Anything else?’ McCabe asked her.

She shook her head. ‘It was dark. He had the hood up. All I saw was his glasses. Black frames.’

‘Wearing glasses, black frames,’ McCabe repeated. ‘Suspect is armed. Consider extremely dangerous.’

He pulled up her sweatshirt to look at the wound. There was a small red and black hole in the right side of her abdomen. About what you’d expect with a .22. Not a lot of blood. It didn’t look lethal, but you never knew. If the bullet hit an organ she could be in trouble. He wondered if there was an exit wound on the other side. He didn’t want to roll her over to look.

‘Gotta go,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back.’ He ran up the stairs.

The voice from Dispatch came back on. ‘Ambulance en route. All units alerted. We’ll be right there.’

The living-room floor was covered in blood. Ellie, if that was the woman’s name, was dead. Her eyes were open but empty. He knelt by her side and wrapped two fingers around her wrist to feel for a pulse. Nothing. He unrolled the bloody nightgown from around her neck and covered her nakedness. There was no further need for bandages.

He had to find Quinn if she was still here, still alive. It was a small apartment. Living room. Kitchen. A single bedroom. A small bath. ‘Abby!’ he called out. ‘This is the police. We’re here to help you.’

He listened. No answer. Leading with his .45, he moved into the bedroom. Dim light shone through the curtains. An unmade king-sized bed. A chair. A lamp. No Quinn. He moved to the closet door, stood to one side, whipped it open. Abby wasn’t there either. He called again. ‘Abby Quinn! This is the police. Come out!’ Still no answer. Either she was in the bathroom or she was gone again. He moved to the bathroom door. Outside he could hear sirens. Shouts. The sound of running feet. Red flashing lights bounced against the living-room walls.

He threw open the bathroom door and stepped in. Heard a whimper from behind the shower curtain. He pulled it open. There was Abby, standing in the tub wearing a clone of the flannel nightgown Ellie had on. At least two sizes too big. Her eyes were tightly shut, her two hands together, one atop the other, as if she were clutching something.

‘It’s alright, Abby,’ he said. ‘I’m the police.’

She opened her eyes wide, looked at him. An expression of baffled terror crossed her face. She drew her two arms back to the left, twisted her body a little in the same direction. She swung her two hands forward hard. An almost perfect pantomime of a two-handed backhand, grunting like Serena Williams in a nightgown. Except Abby’s hands held no racket.

She started screaming and swinging her arms. She fell forward. He caught her. He wrapped his arms around her body and held her tight in a straitjacket hug like he would a child having an uncontrollable tantrum. She writhed and fought and screamed, her eyes wide with horror. He barely managed to hold on. ‘It’s alright, Abby,’ he tried saying, but his voice was drowned out by her screams. She tried head-butting him, but she missed. An EMT rushed into the bathroom.

‘Keep holding her!’ he shouted. McCabe held on. Barely. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the man push up Abby’s sleeve and shoot something in a hypodermic into her arm. She kept screaming and writhing for a minute or so longer, but then her body began to relax. Still he held on. Her screaming stopped. Abby laid her head against McCabe’s shoulder and just continued crying. When she was finally quiet, two EMTs came in, strapped her onto a gurney, and walked her out to an ambulance.

‘McCabe?’ said a man’s voice.

It was T. Ly, the same cop who’d driven him to the Fish Pier. Hard to believe that was less than thirty-six hours ago.

‘How’s Maggie?’ he asked. Outside he could see the flashing blue lights of half a dozen police cars and the red ones of two ambulances.

‘Okay, I think. Medic says they can’t be sure till they get her into the ER, but he thinks she’ll be fine. Says the bullet didn’t seem to hit anything vital.’

McCabe nodded and walked outside. He called Terri Mirabito at home. Woke her up. She said she’d be right there. Next he called 109 and told them to see if they could find an evidence tech who wasn’t out on Harts Island with Jacobi.

Maggie was still conscious as they carried her to the second ambulance. He smiled at her. She smiled back, but her smile turned to a wince as they loaded her in. They shut the doors, and he watched it drive away.

Thirty-One

Two A.M. It looked like a busy night at Cumberland Medical Center. McCabe supposed the combination of a Saturday night and warmer temperatures was luring people out of their houses and into trouble. He stood inside the entrance to the ER looking for someone who could tell him where he could find Maggie. No one seemed to be manning the reception desk. He looked through tight knots of people, the overflow from the waiting area. A teenaged boy moaned nearby. He finally spotted a woman in a white coat, kneeling down and taking information from a dirty-looking man who lay stretched out across three plastic chairs in the waiting area. He looked like he’d come out on the wrong end of a bar fight. McCabe headed toward her, squeezing past a couple in their eighties who sat quietly side by side, holding hands, her head on his shoulder, her eyes red as if she’d been crying. Next to them a three-year-old child was howling in his mother’s arms.

‘I’m looking for Detective Margaret Savage,’ McCabe said, holding up his shield to the woman in white.

‘Who?’ She looked confused.

‘Savage. Margaret Savage. Portland PD.’

‘Wait over there,’ she said, pointing him toward a counter with nobody behind it.

‘That’s the gunshot wound, right?’ A male voice. One of the EMTs from Summer Street. ‘She’s in Trauma Three. Right over there.’ The guy pointed. McCabe nodded his thanks and started across the open space in that direction.

‘Hey, you can’t go in there.’ A nurse rushed after him. McCabe ignored her. One of the hospital security guards followed.

‘Hey,’ she shouted again. McCabe held up his gold shield and pointed it in their direction and kept going. They didn’t follow.

He spotted Maggie lying on a gurney surrounded by seven or eight people, all in scrubs, all moving fast. They were, in turn, surrounded by an array of screens and monitors. A couple of the machines were making beeping noises. Two IVs were hooked into Maggie’s neck. Two more into her arms. Someone, probably a resident judging by his age, was moving a small white wand around Maggie’s abdomen a couple of inches below her navel and watching a screen on what McCabe was pretty sure was an ultrasound machine. Near the wand on Maggie’s right side, he could see a small, ugly red and black hole where the bullet went in just above her hipbone. A blanket covered her body below the wound.