McCabe was familiar with the Airweight. It was light. Easily concealed. Deadly at close quarters.

‘Out of curiosity, Richard, what was Plan A?’

‘Oh, Plan A was much simpler. There would have been no video. Kelly would have gone to jail for the murder.’

‘Murders plural.’

‘Yes, murders plural. Abby, not needed as a hostage, would have jumped off the cliff, her third and final try at suicide tragically successful. I would have sailed back to my office in Portland. And, of course, we all would have mourned her loss in the morning.’

‘Why did she have to die?’ asked Maggie. ‘She couldn’t describe what you looked like.’

‘There was no guarantee of that. Her memory might have come back at any time.’

It was a no go. McCabe knew that if Abby got on Wolfe’s boat, he would kill her as soon as he didn’t need her anymore. Again he considered his options. Shooting the bastard was still number one. He couldn’t think of a second.

‘One last question, Richard.’

‘Before you go?’

‘Yes. Before we go.’ He leveled the .45 at Wolfe’s throat. Where Wolfe’s magic word would come from. If there really was a magic word. ‘It’s sort of a physics question. You know, like the ones we had in high school. If train A leaves station B at forty miles an hour. That sort of thing.’

Wolfe stared at McCabe and then at the gun and said nothing.

‘Want to know what my question is, Richard? It’s kind of an important one.’

Still Wolfe said nothing.

‘My question is, if the bullet in the chamber of my gun leaves the barrel at exactly the same instant you start to shout your magic word, will you be dead before or after the word leaves your mouth?’

‘You’re bluffing.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘That would be murder.’

It was McCabe’s turn to smile. ‘No. Murder is what you do, Dr Wolfe. What I do is called justifiable use of force against a killer threatening a hostage.’

‘McCabe,’ said Maggie.

‘What?’ he answered, his eyes still glued to Wolfe.

‘She’s off the cliff. She’s walking this way.’

McCabe glanced quickly to his right. Abby was heading toward them through the snow. Her feet were bare. Her hands still hung by her sides.

‘Well,’ said McCabe, ‘it seems Abby has solved our hostage crisis. That makes everything much simpler. I want you facedown on the ground with your hands behind your back.’

Wolfe didn’t move.

‘Now, Richard. Otherwise I may shoot you just for the hell of it. You know the headline. “Perpetrator shot and killed resisting arrest.”’

When Quinn was about ten feet from Wolfe, she stopped. ‘You’re Death,’ she said. ‘You have to die.’

She raised a small shiny revolver. Wolfe’s Airweight .38.

‘Abby! No!’ Maggie leapt, hitting Quinn’s legs just as she fired, knocking both knees out from under her and the gun from her hand. The bullet went wide. Wolfe and Maggie dove for the gun. Wolfe won.

He scooped up the revolver and, in one swift motion, rolled to his feet behind Abby. He wrapped an arm around her neck, pulling her in and pushing the short barrel of the Airweight against her throat.

She struggled to get away, but he was too strong, his grip too tight. He started pulling her back, one step at a time, looking first left at McCabe, then right at Maggie.

McCabe and Maggie followed his retreat, McCabe circling left toward the wooden stairs, Maggie circling to the right. Both working to create a wider angle that would give at least one of them a clear shot at Wolfe without hitting Abby. Wolfe looked from one side to the other. Then he looked at the stairs. McCabe was standing in front of them, blocking his escape.

‘Out of the way,’ Wolfe shouted, ‘or she’s dead.’

‘You’ll be dead, too, Richard. Death all around.’

Without warning, Abby wrenched her body violently forward and down, screaming, ‘Shut up! Shut up! I won’t listen to you anymore!’

Suddenly exposed, Wolfe fired at McCabe at precisely the same instant that McCabe fired back. McCabe was a better shot. The big .45 a better gun. McCabe’s bullet struck Wolfe high on the chest, driving him back. Maggie’s bullet hit his back a fraction of a second later, four inches lower. The impact of their two shots drove him backward over the edge of the cliff. He didn’t scream as he fell. McCabe figured that was because he was already dead.

‘Tell them to shut up,’ Abby shrieked. ‘Tell them I won’t listen to them anymore. I won’t listen.’

She tucked herself into a fetal position and wept. Maggie sat down in the snow next to her and gently stroked her back. McCabe peered over the cliff through the growing darkness. He saw a retreating wave pull Wolfe’s body away from the rocks and out into the frigid water. If the bullets hadn’t killed him, surely the fall had. If not the fall, then surely the icy cold January seas. Any way you cut it, it was over.

‘He was Death. He had to die,’ Abby told Maggie between sobs. ‘He had to die.’

McCabe called for the fireboat and an ambulance to meet them on the other side. They were taking Abby to Winter Haven. He hoped she wouldn’t have to be there long. But there was no way of knowing.

Forty

Portland, Maine

Maggie and McCabe returned to 109. The photographs from New York were waiting for them in McCabe’s e-mail in-box. They both peered at the screen and flipped through them one at a time. There were six in all, and Lainie was right. All six were both graphic and disgusting.

For what it was worth, the girl in the photos wasn’t Tara. It was someone who looked much younger with a thin, barely developed body. She may have been sixteen, but, as Astarita said, she looked more like twelve.

‘I’m glad he’s dead,’ said Maggie, staring at the screen.

‘That’s the first time I’ve ever heard you say that.’

‘I only wish we could have made it more painful.’ She turned away from the images and went back to her desk. ‘Maybe we’ll find her alive,’ she said as she eased herself down in her chair. ‘Maybe she managed to get away.’

‘Yeah, maybe,’ said McCabe. ‘You never know.’

They both knew they were blowing smoke. The odds of Wolfe’s having let the girl live when he’d killed all the others were next to zero. Even now, teams of cops equipped with ground-penetrating radar and a couple of cadaver dogs were out searching John Kelly’s five-acre property. If they didn’t find her there, they’d extend the search to the rest of the island. But the truth was, her body could be almost anywhere. The girl didn’t fit into Wolfe’s scheme to frame John Kelly, and like Maggie said, Maine was a big state.

‘I guess Kelly will be able to tell us who she is,’ he said. ‘Maybe help us find her.’ The District Attorney’s office had authorized the ex-priest’s release less than an hour earlier. He was probably already home.

McCabe shut down his computer, stuffed a couple of files in his bottom drawer, and stood up from his desk. ‘Why don’t you go home?’ he said to Maggie. ‘You’ve got to be at least as tired as I am. Maybe more. I don’t have the benefit of two bullet holes in me. Tom or Brian can go over the pictures with Kelly.’

‘You go,’ she said. ‘Don’t you remember what I told you last night? I’m Superwoman. Besides, I’d like to finish this up myself.’

McCabe called Kyra from the car. Told her it was over. Told her he was back. She was in her studio, she said, putting the finishing touches on a new painting. She told him she’d be home in an hour.

‘Wagging your tail and happy as a clam?’

‘Absolutely. I’ll stop at Hannaford’s on the way for some groceries. Somehow, I have a feeling you guys could use a decent meal.’

The lights were on in the apartment when McCabe pulled into his place on the Eastern Prom. He climbed the stairs to the third floor and unlocked the door.