Without enough fish coming in, the Fish Exchange auctions, once held daily at noon, had become intermittent. Half the time they didn’t happen at all. Some longtime Portland fishing families were being squeezed out of the business. Others moved down the coast to Gloucester, where selling stray lobsters was allowed. The captains who remained weren’t happy.
Near the end of the pier, McCabe could see a pack of PPD units, light bars flashing. They were clustered next to the Vessel Services facility. Behind them yellow crime scene tape cordoned off the far end of the pier. Ly joined them. Half a dozen cold cops, clouds of breath streaming from their mouths, were stamping their feet, clapping their hands, or just moving around to keep warm. Two had positioned themselves by the tape to keep unauthorized visitors out of the active crime scene area. The others were keeping them company. A MedCU unit was just leaving. A dead body meant there was nothing for the paramedics to do.
‘Hey.’ Maggie Savage greeted McCabe as he emerged from the car. She was bundled in a dark blue Gore-Tex parka, hands in her pockets, a wool watch cap pulled down around her ears, her shield pinned to the outside.
‘Hey, yourself. What’s going on?’ McCabe borrowed Ly’s Maglite, and they headed toward a bronze BMW convertible parked facing in toward the city from the far end of the pier. Its driver’s side door and trunk lid gaped open. Senior evidence tech Bill Jacobi and one of his guys were busy taking their pictures and measurements, drawing their diagrams, and writing their notes. The car was elegantly framed at a three-quarter angle between two concrete arms that poked out from the end of the pier into the Fore River, the tidal estuary that formed the far end of Portland harbor. Its rear wheels were two or three feet from the edge, leaving just enough room for the techs to walk behind the car without falling in. McCabe could see reflections of ambient light from nearby buildings as well as the more distant Casco Bay Bridge bouncing off the showroom-shiny fenders. Like an ad in a glossy magazine, the damned thing practically shouted, Hey, look at me! Ain’t I sexy? To McCabe, it seemed too artfully placed for it to have been accidental. Someone wanted the car to be noticed.
As they stood there, Maggie handed him a plastic box of Tic-Tacs. ‘Here. Before you breathe on anyone else, you might want to suck on a couple of these.’
‘That bad, huh?’
‘Not for anyone who appreciates the finer qualities of single malt. I just don’t think it’s something you want Jacobi noticing. Or the uniforms either, for that matter. Big night on the town?’
‘I guess I had a few.’ He left it at that and tossed two white pellets into his mouth. If truth be told, he felt a bit sick. He might have trouble walking the proverbial straight line. He handed the box back. ‘Anything new?’ he asked. He wondered if he was slurring his words.
‘Just what I told you on the phone. Woman’s body is stuffed in the trunk,’ Maggie said. ‘Frozen solid.’
McCabe shivered. ‘I know how she feels.’
‘She’s packed in there so tight, I’m not sure how we’re gonna get her out. At least not till she thaws.’
‘Who called it in?’
‘Guy named Doug Hester a little after six.’
About the time he was deciding to go to Kyra’s show.
‘Hester’s office is over there,’ Maggie continued. ‘The one with lights on on the second floor. He runs a one-man marine insurance agency. Says he could see the car from his desk. It’s been sitting there, illegally parked, since at least seven thirty yesterday morning when he came to work.’
Thirty-six hours. ‘What took him so long to call it in?’
‘It wasn’t just him. There must have been fifty people who saw that car parked where it shouldn’t be, and for two solid days none of them called it in. Either to us or to a towing service. I asked Hester why. He said people on the waterfront don’t like to pry into other people’s business.’
McCabe nodded. A familiar scenario. Citizens not wanting to get involved. Too polite. Too fearful. Too lazy. It was a problem for police departments across the country. It bugged the hell out of McCabe, but it was tough to figure out what to do about it.
‘He said the car wasn’t bothering him,’ Maggie continued. ‘Didn’t seem to be bothering anyone else. So he, quote, didn’t pay it no never mind, unquote. Also he says it’s not that unusual for the wife of one of the captains to leave a car for her husband for when his boat gets in.’
‘So what made him change his mind?’
‘He started thinking how none of the fishing families he knows is likely to have a brand-new BMW convertible. Not with the business in the dumper the way it is now. And, even if they did, they sure as hell wouldn’t leave it sitting at the end of the pier for two days. So, at long last, he walks over and takes a closer look. Sees the keys in the ignition. Tries the door. It’s not locked.’
‘Getting his prints all over everything?’
‘Probably. Though he says just the door. Anyway, he gets suspicious and finally decides to call.’
‘Okay, so the car wasn’t here when Hester left work Wednesday night, but it was here when he arrived Thursday morning. So sometime during that twelve-hour window somebody, presumably the killer, but possibly the victim, drives it in and parks it in the most prominent position on the pier.’
‘Looks that way.’
‘Why?’
‘We don’t know.’
‘Hester pop the trunk?’ asked McCabe.
‘No. That was the responding officer. Uniform named Joe Vodnick. He popped the trunk and found the body. Little over an hour ago.’
‘Was there probable cause for opening the trunk?’
‘I think there may be some question about that.’
McCabe thought about it. Opening the trunk was no big deal if the car belonged to the victim. Elaine Goff or whoever it was wasn’t going to complain about illegal search or seizure, dead as she was and stuffed inside. On the other hand, if the dead woman wasn’t Goff, if Goff was the killer or somehow connected to the killer, the investigation could be compromised even before it began. ‘Which one’s Vodnick?’
‘The big guy over there on the right.’
Vodnick was big alright. Six foot six. Built like a linebacker. Probably weighed 260, maybe more. He was busy bullshitting with a couple of the other cops. ‘Did you ask him about probable cause?’
‘He said the car roused his suspicions.’
‘Roused his suspicions? That’s nice. Anything a little more substantive?’
‘Nope. He just said here was this expensive car, parked in a place it shouldn’t have been for two days. Doors unlocked. Key in the ignition. He checked with Dispatch, and the car wasn’t reported stolen. So he looked in the trunk. Listen, Mike, I don’t know what a judge would say about probable cause, but I do know we probably wouldn’t have found her otherwise. Hell, she could have been sitting in a tow yard until she thawed and somebody noticed the smell. I say he made a good call.’
‘Assuming some slick-ass lawyer doesn’t have the whole case thrown out on a technicality. I assume Vodnick’s prints are on the car as well?’
‘He says just the outside door handle and trunk release button, which is under the dash to the left of the wheel. Claims he was careful. Tried not to smear other possible prints.’
McCabe stood silently for a long minute, breathing in cold, damp air that smelled like seaweed and rotting fish, scanning the scene, burning its details into the hard drive he carried in his brain. A brand-new Beemer, unlocked, keys in the ignition, sitting there for two days. Amazing nobody tried to steal it. In New York it would’ve been gone in the blink of an eye. Maybe that was the bad guy’s intention. Have some clueless kid take it for a joyride. Get his prints all over it. Get blamed for the murder when he was finally caught, nobody believing his denials. Not a bad plan. Might’ve worked. Except this was Maine, and nobody bothered stealing it.