His mind went back to Kyra. To the fight, if that’s what it was. Why was he so hot to marry again? His marriage to Sandy had been a disaster. Except, of course, that it produced Casey, who was, without question, the best thing that ever happened to him. Amazing how such a great kid could ever have come out of that selfish bitch’s body. All she said after nine hours of labor was ‘Never again.’ Didn’t even want to hold her new daughter. Breastfeed? Not on your life.
So why go through the marriage thing again? Well, for one thing, Kyra wasn’t Sandy. They were about as different as two gorgeous, sexy women could be. Okay, so why not just enjoy his relationship with the gorgeous, sexy Kyra and leave marriage out of the equation? That’s what any therapist would want to know. He’d have to think about the answer.
By the time McCabe passed Washington Avenue, the cold was getting to him. His ears and toes were starting to go numb, and, drunk or not, he was beginning to regret the decision to walk. He figured he was sobering up, but not fast enough. He passed a new place called the Frost Line Café, coffee bar by day, open mike cabaret by night. He stopped and peered through the windows. They were all misted up from the body heat inside.
He went in and worked his way through the noisy crowd to the bar and ordered a small cup of coffee from a large, heavily pierced young woman wearing so much makeup that she looked to McCabe like a refugee from the set of Ernst Lubitsch’s Gypsy Blood. Probably was. Just couldn’t find her castanets. Incongruously, in spite of the getup, her accent was pure Downeast. She handed him an earthenware mug big enough to double as a soup tureen and pointed to a row of insulated pots on the far side. Told him to help himself. He did, adding a generous dollop of milk to the strong brew. He hadn’t eaten in a while and figured he could use the nutrition.
On the far side of the room, a tinny-voiced girl singer was belting out her version of the Dixie Chicks’ ‘Not Ready to Make Nice’ to a crowd that seemed more interested in talking than listening. Natalie Maines had nothing to worry about. McCabe was scanning the room for a place to park himself and his mega cup when he felt his cell vibrate. By the time he fished it out from under three layers of wool, the line had gone dead. The call was from Maggie. McCabe was tempted not to call back. It couldn’t be anything good, and he needed to be with Kyra right now. But even as he thought it, he knew it wasn’t an option. If something was going on, he needed to know what it was. He headed for the men’s room, where he figured he could hear Maggie, stay warm, and have some privacy all at the same time. He closed and locked the door. The sound of the Dixie Chick wannabe receded. He punched in Maggie’s number.
‘Where are you, McCabe?’
‘At the moment? In a men’s room on Congress Street.’
‘Fine. Whatever it is you’re doing there, when you finish, would you please get your ass down to the Fish Pier. The far end by the water. Seems we’ve got a little problem.’
This wasn’t great timing. ‘What kind of problem?’ he asked.
‘The murder kind,’ Maggie replied.
Maggie – Detective Margaret Savage – was McCabe’s number two in the PPD’s Crimes Against People unit. They’d been working cases together ever since Chief Shockley bucked the unions and brought McCabe in from New York four years ago. In spite of a long Portland PD tradition of supervisors supervising and detectives working cases, McCabe liked getting into the weeds, especially when it came to homicide, and Maggie was always his partner of choice.
‘Anything I oughta know?’
‘I don’t know much myself. A uniform discovered the body during a routine check. No positive ID yet. Young female Caucasian. Stuffed into the trunk of a car, possibly her own, parked illegally on the pier. She’s dead, naked, and frozen solid.’
The frozen part was no big surprise if she’d been in the trunk a while. Unfortunately, a frozen body meant there’d be no decomposition. No decomposition meant there’d be no way to establish time of death. No time of death meant no way to check alibis. Somebody knocked on the restroom door. ‘Be right out,’ McCabe shouted to the knocker. He faced away from the door and turned on the taps to drown out the sound of his voice. ‘Anything else?’
‘Only that the car’s a brand-new BMW convertible. Registered to an Elaine Elizabeth Goff of Portland. A marine insurance guy who works on the pier spotted it yesterday morning, parked where it shouldn’t be. He didn’t call it in until today. About an hour ago.’
‘You call Fortier?’
‘Yeah. Told him what I just told you. He said he’d brief Shockley.’ Chief Shockley wanted to be kept up to the minute on any homicides. There weren’t many murders in Portland, and when they happened he hated to look dumb in front of reporters. Especially the one he was sleeping with.
The knocker knocked again. ‘Just a damned minute,’ McCabe yelled at the door. Then he said into the phone, ‘Okay, Mag, I’ll be right there.’ He hit end call and exited the men’s room. The knocker gave McCabe what he figured was supposed to be a withering look. McCabe smiled back sweetly. ‘All yours.’ He threaded his way through the crowd and out the door. He called Kyra from the street.
‘Don’t tell me,’ she said. ‘I can guess. You’re not coming.’ She sounded more disappointed than angry.
‘No, I’m not, but not for the reason you think. I was on my way to the gallery when Maggie called. They found a dead body dumped on one of the piers.’
‘Murder?’
‘Looks that way.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
‘Me, too. About everything. I want you to know that. And I want you to know I want to be there. How’s the turnout?’
‘Great, considering the weather.’
‘Any reaction from the other major Maine artists?’
‘Actually, Marta Einhorn’s being very gracious. The others haven’t said much. Oh, and Joe Kleinerman from the Press Herald –’
‘The arts critic?’
‘Yeah. He wants to do a piece about my work.’
McCabe spotted a PPD black-and-white unit heading east on Congress. He stepped into the middle of the street and flagged it down. ‘That’s great. Listen, I’ve got to go now. I love you. I wanted you to know that as well.’
‘Yeah. Me, too.’
McCabe hung up. A young Asian patrol officer pulled up. McCabe leaned in and flashed his shield in case the guy didn’t recognize him. It wasn’t necessary. The Lucas Kane case last year had made McCabe a minor celebrity, not just in the department but pretty much all over the city. He’d even gotten some press in New York. ‘Hiya, Sergeant. What do you need?’
The cop’s name tag identified him as T. Ly. Probably the shortest last name in the history of the department. Cambodian, McCabe guessed. There were quite a few Cambodians living in Portland. Most resettled as refugees back in the nineties.
‘Ly?’ McCabe asked, pronouncing it Lee. ‘Right pronunciation?’
The man nodded. ‘It’ll do.’
‘Can you get me to the Fish Pier? Like fast?’
Three
McCabe squeezed into the front seat, space made tight by the unit’s onboard computer. Ly flipped on lights and siren, pulled a U-turn on Congress, and took off. It took less than two minutes to reach the Fish Pier. A sprawling waterfront complex off Commercial Street, the Portland Fish Pier was home to businesses serving the city’s working waterfront, especially its struggling groundfish industry. A PPD unit blocked their way. Ly cut the siren and rolled down the window. The wind was howling even louder than before. A cop leaned in. ‘Hiya, Sergeant. Go on down to the end of the pier.’ He pointed. ‘You’ll see a bunch of units pulled in by the Vessel Services building. Can’t miss ’em.’
Ly followed the road that looped around to the end of the pier. On their left, McCabe noted the boxy silhouette of the Portland Fish Exchange. A few years ago it would have been lit up and busy. Tonight it loomed dark and empty. A once thriving auction market where trawlers working out of Portland and a handful of other Maine ports sold their catches, the exchange had fallen on hard times. Federal regulations aimed at replenishing fish stocks cut trawlers’ days at sea to a bare minimum. Catches and income were way down. Adding insult to injury, McCabe remembered reading, legislation backed by Maine’s powerful lobstermen’s lobby was keeping the fishermen from making a few extra bucks by selling the lobsters they snared in their nets. They had to throw them back. Or sneak them home to share with friends.