Текст книги "The Chill of Night"

Автор книги: James Hayman

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Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

Six

Less than a minute later, Maggie threaded the big Ford down the narrow alleyway that led to the police garage. She pulled into a free space near the back door between two black-and-white units. Wordlessly they entered the building and took the elevator to four. The bureau was empty except for Tom Tasco, who was on the phone, and Brian Cleary, who had his feet up on his desk and was chewing away on a slice of pizza. Cleary, recently promoted to plainclothes, was the new kid on the block. Tasco was a seasoned detective with more than eighteen years in the PPD. McCabe figured Tasco was the right guy to show Cleary the ropes. McCabe had assigned Tasco’s former partner, Eddie Fraser, to work with the sometimes difficult Carl Sturgis.

Cleary looked up as McCabe and Maggie approached. ‘A couple more pies down the conference room if you guys want some,’ he said.

McCabe realized he was famished. He hadn’t eaten all day except for a bagel at breakfast. ‘Okay, let’s talk down there,’ he said. He signaled Tasco to follow when he finished his call. A couple of open boxes of pizza and some warm Cokes sat on the big table. A detective named John Hughes from Crimes Against Property was helping himself to a slice. ‘Who do I owe?’

‘Shockley’s treat,’ said Cleary.

‘That’s a first,’ said Hughes. ‘He must like you guys.’ Hughes took his food and left. Tasco came in.

‘Shockley still here?’ asked McCabe.

‘No. He just left. So did Fortier,’ said Cleary.

‘Anything else going on?’

‘You mean other than your frozen corpse?’

‘Yeah. Other than her.’

‘A couple of assholes decided to ring in the new year by beating the shit out of a homeless guy over on Preble Street.’

‘Just for the fun of it?’

‘Looks that way. Though it may have been racial. The vic was black and he didn’t have anything worth stealing. Bill ’n’ Will are checking it out now.’ Detectives Bill Bacon and Will Messing had been universally known by their rhyming first names since McCabe teamed them up three years earlier.

‘We know who did it?’

‘Not yet, but the vic’s in the ICU at Cumberland. Might not make it.’

Detective Carl Sturgis stuck his head in the door. ‘This a private party, or can anyone play?’

‘C’mon in, Carl,’ said McCabe. ‘Where’s Eddie?’

‘At a school play. Peter Pan. His daughter’s playin’ the head fairy.’

‘Tinker Bell?’ Maggie smiled.

‘Yeah. Tinker Bell. Probably over by now,’ said Sturgis, checking his watch. He helped himself to a slice of the pizza and a Coke and sat down.

McCabe signaled Maggie, who nodded and flipped open her cell. ‘Hey, Eddie, it’s Maggie.’ Pause. ‘Sorry to call you at home, but if the play’s over we need you to come in tonight.’ Pause. ‘Yeah. A murder. Plan on a long night.’ Pause. ‘No. Wait till the star’s tucked in. We can manage till then. Hope she brought the house down.’

‘By the way, some oversized uniform named Vodnick just deposited a witness in the small interview room,’ said Sturgis. ‘Guy named Hester?’

‘Hester can sit for a minute,’ said McCabe.

Tasco came in and handed everyone a set of color photos. Three shots of the same woman. ‘Elaine Goff?’ asked Maggie.

‘Yup,’ said Tasco. ‘Elaine Elizabeth Goff, attorney at law and, as you all know, the owner of a brand-new BMW 325i convertible. I assume this is your corpse?’

McCabe spread his set of pictures on the table one after the other. The resemblance to Sandy was even more startling in the photographs than it had been with the dead and frozen woman in the trunk. ‘Yeah,’ he said finally, ‘that’s her. Where’d you get the pics?’

‘Google Images. Amazing the stuff you can find there.’

McCabe studied each picture in turn. The first was a business headshot in black and white. A formal Fabian Bachrach kind of thing. The second must have come from someone’s vacation blog. It showed Goff by a pool, wearing a skimpy bikini. Palm trees in the background. She was looking straight into the camera and sipping what looked like a piña colada. In this shot she looked more like Sandy than in either of the others. Sure as hell more than she did lying dead in the back of a Beemer. It wasn’t just the setting or the bikini that made the resemblance startling. It was the attitude. The same half smile, half smirk he’d seen a thousand times. The one that said, Eat your heart out, asshole, I’m way too hot for the likes of you. It gave him the feeling he knew everything there was to know about Elaine Elizabeth Goff. Even though they weren’t the same woman. Even though there had to be differences. It was a feeling he had to be careful of.

In the last of the pictures Goff was wearing a strapless black evening dress at some kind of function. Looked like the kind of shot a press photographer might take at a fancy charity event. The Press Herald ran that stuff all the time. She was standing in a small group with another young woman, an attractive freckle-faced blonde, and three guys in black tie. Two of them were gray-haired and probably in their fifties. The third, the one to Lainie’s right, was maybe ten years younger. He was looking straight into the camera with intense dark blue eyes. He had a thin face, a crooked nose, and longish dark hair. McCabe wouldn’t have called him handsome, but there was something in those eyes that drew attention. Star quality. Charisma. Call it what you will, but even in competition with a beauty like Lainie Goff, one’s eyes might well go to him first – and stay with him the longest.

‘Who’s the guy with the violet eyes?’ asked McCabe.

‘Name’s John Kelly,’ said Tasco. ‘He’s executive director of a small nonprofit called Sanctuary House. Shelter for runaway kids located off Longfellow Square. Doesn’t seem like a black-tie kind of guy, so I figure the party must have been a fund-raiser for them.’

‘Who’s the woman and the other two guys standing with Goff?’

‘Don’t know yet,’ said Tasco. ‘That’s something we have to track down.’

McCabe slipped his set of pictures into the breast pocket of his jacket.

Tasco passed another printout around the table. ‘Elaine Goff’s bio page from the Palmer Milliken Web site.’

Elaine E. Goff

Associate

Direct Dial: 207.555.1041

[email protected]

Elaine Goff joined Palmer Milliken as an associate in the firm’s Mergers & Acquisitions Practice Group in 2000. Prior to joining the firm, Lainie served as law clerk to United States District Court Judge Edward Mellman.

Education

Lainie earned a B.A. from Colby College (1997) and a J.D., magna cum laude, at the Cornell University School of Law (2000). At Cornell, she was a member of the Cornell Law Review and served as articles editor her final year.

Bar Admissions

Lainie is admitted to practice in Maine.

‘Hell of a waste of a fine-looking woman, is all I can say.’ It was Brian Cleary. He was still gazing at Goff in her bikini. ‘Looks like that actress. You know. What’s her name? The one who played the math guy’s wife in A Beautiful Mind?’

‘Jennifer Connelly,’ said McCabe.

‘Yeah. Jennifer Connelly. Like her.’ Cleary shook his head in admiration. ‘Man, I don’t know why a hottie like this ever bothered going to law school. She coulda been a model, an actress, anything.’

‘A hottie? Gee, Brian, that’s not what I heard. I heard this babe’s ice cold.’ Sturgis guffawed at his own wit.

‘Oh, for chrissakes,’ said Maggie. ‘Brian, why don’t you do us all a favor and stop drooling over that picture like a horny twelve-year-old. The woman’s dead. And Carl, can the jokes, alright? They’re not funny.’

‘Oh. Yeah. Gee. Okay . . . Sorry, Mag,’ said Cleary, his normally red face turning even redder.

Sturgis just glared. He didn’t like being rebuked by a woman. Especially a younger woman who outranked him in spite of serving fewer years in the department. There was a short, embarrassed silence around the table.

McCabe broke it. ‘Okay, enough,’ he said. ‘Let’s get back to work. Maggie, would you go talk to Hester? He’s been cooling his heels long enough. Any longer, he’ll take a walk.’ If Hester was hiding anything, Maggie was the one to find it. She was as good as anybody McCabe had ever seen at ferreting information from reluctant witnesses. He’d seen her go from sympathetic to tough to friendly to threatening in the blink of an eye, all without pissing witnesses off or closing them down. Most never knew what hit them. ‘Meantime, I’ll brief these guys on what we saw on the pier.’

Maggie nodded, collected her copies of the printouts, and left. McCabe spent the next fifteen minutes going over what they’d found, including the frozen note pried from Goff’s mouth and Terri’s opinion on the cause of death.

‘She was pithed, huh? Somebody stuck a knife in my neck, I guess I’d be pretty pithed, too,’ said Sturgis, again chortling at his own wit.

McCabe threw him a warning look. ‘All right, Carl, like Maggie said, it’s time for you to stop with the humor. A woman’s been murdered, and if you or any of you other guys think that’s funny, trust me, I can have you out of this unit and back in a uniform before you even stop laughing.’

Sturgis murmured an apology. McCabe turned back to Tasco. ‘Tommy, did you manage to track down Goff’s landlord?’

‘Yeah. Guy named Andrew Barker. Lives downstairs in the same building she lived in. It’s a six-unit over on Brackett. Number 342. Barker told me Goff’s apartment sits right above his on the second floor. Also says he hasn’t seen her in a while. Thought she was on vacation. I asked him if her mail was piling up. He said no.’

‘You check with the post office?’

‘Yes. That’s who I was talking to when you and Maggie got back. Goff submitted a hold-mail request to start Saturday, December twenty-fourth. Deliveries scheduled to resume this Monday.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Yeah. I told Barker we were investigating a possible homicide and that we’d be sending the techs over to take a look at her apartment. Guy seemed kind of excited about that. Anyway, he said he’d be there to let them in and that he hoped nothing bad happened to Lainie. That’s what he called her, Lainie. I said we didn’t know yet.’

‘He’ll figure it out soon enough,’ said McCabe. ‘At least he will if he watches TV. Any luck with her cell phone?’

‘Yeah,’ said Brian Cleary. ‘I worked on that. She uses Verizon.’ He glanced at his notebook and read out the number. ‘Number’s 555-4390. I got a subpoena and asked the company for a record of all her calls, incoming and outgoing, for the past three months. Also for access to voice mail messages for the last thirty days. I told them it was urgent. Supervisor there said they’d get it together, have it for me in the morning. Asked me to fax over a copy of the subpoena. I did.’

‘Good.’

‘Got something else, too.’ Cleary was hunched forward in his chair, his foot tapping nervously on the floor. McCabe had high hopes for the young detective. He saw Cleary as a throwback to the Irish cops of thirty and forty years ago. McCabe’s father’s generation. Smart and aggressive with a wise-guy cockiness that reminded McCabe of the young Jimmy Cagney. Made it, Ma! Top of the world! He looked a little like Cagney, too. Short, maybe five-eight or five-nine, with reddish blond hair and a face full of freckles. Cleary had been a bit of a brawler as a kid. Until his old man put a stop to it. Told young Brian if he enjoyed beating people up so much, he’d be better off doing it inside a boxing ring instead of in schoolyards. Turned out to be a pretty good welterweight. Won a bunch of bouts at the Portland Boxing Club. Even thought about turning pro, then thought better of it. He joined the department instead.

‘I found the head of HR on the Palmer Milliken Web site. Woman named Beth Kotterman. Called her at home. Asked her if anyone at PM would know about Goff’s vacation plans. She said yeah, she would. Seems all staff at Palmer Milliken have to let the office know where they’ll be on vacation in case there’s an emergency.’

‘A legal emergency?’ asked McCabe.

Cleary shrugged. ‘I guess. She asked me why we wanted to know. I told her Goff’s car was found on the pier and we thought something bad might have happened to her. She dropped everything and went to the office to check her files. I guess she lives nearby, ’cause she called back a few minutes later. Said Goff was away for two weeks, returning next Monday. Her last day in the office was Friday, December twenty-third.’

‘Two weeks ago.’

‘Yeah. That’s why nobody reported her missing. She had reservations starting the twenty-fourth at a place called the Bacuba Spa and Resort on Aruba. Bacuba on Aruba.’

‘Traveling alone?’

‘I think so. At least she wasn’t sharing a room. I called the resort, and they had her down as a single.’

‘Place sounds expensive.’

‘It is. Twelve hundred bucks a night. When she didn’t show, they charged her credit card two nights as a penalty. I checked with Visa, and other than the penalty charge the card hasn’t been used since the twenty-second, when there was a charge for sixteen dollars and fifty-two cents from the Jan Mee Restaurant on St John Street.’

‘Is Kotterman still at the office?’

‘She said she was going home, but we should feel free to call her if there was anything else we needed.’

‘You still have her number?’ asked McCabe.

Cleary wrote it down on a piece of paper. McCabe glanced at it and then crumpled it up. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘The timing’s a gift. It gives us back our chance to check alibis. Whoever killed her had to have grabbed her between the time she left her office on the twenty-third and before she was supposed to get on her flight to Aruba. Did you find out anything about her travel plans?’

Cleary shook his head no.

McCabe turned to Sturgis. ‘Carl, I want you to find out what airport she was leaving from, what flight she was supposed to be on, and if she ever checked in.’

‘Think he might have grabbed her at the airport?’ asked Tasco.

McCabe shrugged. ‘Let’s find out.’

Sturgis didn’t move. McCabe figured it was because, as a senior detective, he resented being asked to do what he considered routine clerical work. Tough shit. A lot of being a detective, senior or not, consisted of nothing more than routine clerical work.

‘Like now, Carl,’ said McCabe.

Sturgis finally nodded, got up, and left. He passed Maggie on his way out the door without saying a word.

‘What got into him?’ she asked.

‘Don’t ask.’

‘Okay.’ Maggie rejoined the others at the table and sat down. ‘Hester doesn’t know anything.’

‘You’re sure.’

‘I’m sure. I poked, I prodded, I pleaded. All he knows is what he told Vodnick down at the pier.’

McCabe filled Maggie in on what she’d missed. After that he sat for a long minute piecing the investigation together in his mind.

Tasco broke the silence. ‘Okay. Where do we go from here?’

‘You’re going to Brackett Street,’ said McCabe. ‘I want you and Brian to round up as many warm bodies as you can. That includes Fraser when he gets here and Bill ’n’ Will when they finish checking out the assault. Split into teams. Make sure everyone has a copy of her Palmer Milliken bio picture and start banging on doors. You know the drill. Start with the other tenants in Goff’s building, then fan out to include surrounding buildings on Brackett and then the neighborhood. Wake people up if you have to. Include any small businesses she may have patronized. Dry cleaners. Convenience stores. Whatever. It’s not that late. Some may still be open.’

Maggie looked at the pictures again. ‘Let’s not ignore the obvious. Goff would’ve attracted men like flies,’ she said. ‘If she had a regular boyfriend, we need to bring him in and grill him. Maybe this whole thing was nothing more than a lovers’ spat that got out of hand.’

‘Doesn’t fit the MO,’ said McCabe. ‘Abusive boyfriends are usually a little more direct in their approach than neat little holes in the back of the neck, and they don’t leave quotations from the Bible. Still, you’re right, we ought to check it out. Tom, see if any of the neighbors can give you names or descriptions of current or former sexual partners.’

‘Could be somebody she dumped recently,’ said Cleary. ‘Somebody who maybe wasn’t too happy about it and decided to take it out on her. We’ll also check to see if anyone other than Goff was seen driving the Beemer. That’s a car people would notice. And remember.’

Tasco’s droopy bloodhound face was looking even more worried than usual. ‘Y’know, we’re not going to be able to cover all this stuff tonight.’

Maybe I should start calling him Deputy Dawg, thought McCabe. ‘I understand,’ he said. ‘Just get started and keep at it until something turns up. Also send some of the uniforms to start knocking on doors down at the Fish Pier.’

‘Okay, I’ll have a team take a whack at it,’ said Tasco, ‘but you gotta remember we’re talking about a commercial area here. Empty at this hour. Probably empty when the guy drove in with the body. Could be empty all weekend.’

‘We’re not waiting till Monday,’ said McCabe. ‘This happened in the middle of the city. Someone might’ve been around. Might’ve been watching. Maybe someone with a security camera. Maybe someone who works nights. Aren’t there people working at the Fish Exchange at all hours?’

‘Once upon a time,’ said Cleary. ‘Fishing ain’t what it used to be.’

‘Well, unless and until you have a better idea, let’s see what we can find. I’ll ask Fortier to get you enough people to help knock on doors.’

‘You want me to work the canvass?’ asked Maggie.

‘No. I’d like you to go downstairs and see how Jacobi’s doing cutting Goff out of the Beemer. After she’s on her way to Augusta, I want you to go with the techs to check out her apartment.’

‘Where are you off to?’

‘I’m going to talk to Beth Kotterman. See if I can find out who Goff’s next of kin is. Maybe find out who she palled around with at the office.’ McCabe stood and collected the small pile of printouts. ‘Anybody have anything else?’ He looked at each of his detectives. Nobody responded. ‘Okay. That’s it, then. Call my cell if you find anything meaningful. Otherwise, let’s meet back here tomorrow morning, ten o’clock. And don’t forget what the note said. All the sinners of my people shall die by the sword. “All the sinners” sounds like more than one to me. If that’s the case, he could already be looking for a new playmate. Let’s find him before he finds her.’

Seven

McCabe’s footsteps echoed off the marble walls and floor of Ten Monument Square as he walked across the semidarkened lobby toward a circular security desk. A young black man wearing horn-rimmed glasses and a blue blazer watched him approach. The words METCO Security were stitched in gold letters above the blazer’s breast pocket. A gray-haired woman stood at the side of the desk, hands thrust into the pockets of her open wool coat. Under the coat she wore faded blue jeans and a blue U. Maine sweatshirt, clothes thrown on for an unexpected trip to the office. McCabe placed her in her early fifties. She looked anxious.

‘Ms. Kotterman?’ he asked.

‘Yes, I’m Beth Kotterman. You must be Sergeant McCabe?’

‘That’s right. I’m sorry to keep interrupting your Friday night.’

‘It doesn’t matter. Not in a situation like this. Do you know anything more about’ – she paused, searching for the right word – ‘about what happened?’

‘I’d rather talk in your office, if you don’t mind.’

‘Of course. Come with me.’

‘Uh, excuse me, sir,’ said the guard, ‘would you mind signing in first?’

‘He’s with me, Randall. He’s a police officer.’

‘Sorry, Ms Kotterman. Police or no police,’ said the guard, ‘he’s still gotta sign in. Rules say everybody signs in. Don’t say “except police.”’ The guard smiled. He probably didn’t have a lot of opportunities to hassle cops, and he was enjoying the moment.

‘Not a problem,’ said McCabe, returning the smile. ‘Wanna see my ID?’

The guard shrugged. ‘Sure.’

McCabe flipped open his badge wallet, laid it on the desk, picked up the pen and clipboard, and scrawled his name in the first open space, adding the time 10:32 P.M. in the second. There was a long list of names above his own. He didn’t recognize any except Beth Kotterman’s.

The guard glanced at McCabe’s ID and handed it back. ‘Thank you.’

‘My pleasure. Does everyone who comes into the building also have to sign out?’

‘If they don’t work here, yeah. If they sign in, they sign out.’

‘What about people who do work here?’

‘They only have to sign in or out after 6:00 P.M.’

‘Does everyone show you ID?’

‘Nope. Rules don’t require identification.’

Stupid rules, thought McCabe. Anybody could sign in using any name they wanted. ‘Ms. Kotterman, could you give me a minute just to ask Randall here a couple more questions?’

Kotterman nodded. She obviously wanted to be finished with this, but she said, ‘That’s fine. I’ll be in my office. When you’re ready, ask him to call my extension. I’ll come down and get you.’

The guard eyed McCabe. ‘What do you want to talk to me about?’

‘Just want to ask you a few questions.’

‘I don’t have to answer any questions.’

‘No, I guess you don’t, but I’m pretty sure my friends over at METCO Security would be a whole lot happier with you if you did. Now, what’d you say your last name was?’

‘Jackson. Randall Jackson.’

‘Okay, Randall,’ said McCabe, ‘let me make sure I understand the rules. You said all visitors to the building have to sign in and sign out, but anyone who works here only has to sign in or out after 6:00 P.M. Is that right?’

‘Yeah. That’s right.’

‘So how do you know who’s who?’

‘Whaddaya mean?’

‘You know everybody who works in the building?’

‘Most of ’em. By face anyway. The ones I don’t know either sign in or show me ID.’

‘Nobody ever slips through without signing?’

The guard studied McCabe for a minute. ‘Not on my watch.’

‘How about anybody else’s watch?’

‘Can’t speak to that.’

‘Is there someone on this desk around the clock?’

‘Yep. Twenty-four seven.’

‘You work alone, or do you have a partner?’

‘During the day there are two of us. At night I’m alone.’

‘Where do you go to take a leak?’

‘There’s a break room in the basement. With a toilet.’

‘So somebody might be able to slip through while you’re taking a leak?’

‘No. That door you used to come into the building? I lock it if I have to go downstairs.’

‘And there are no other ways in?’

‘Not at night. Back door only opens from the inside, and the garage is gated. You need a card key to raise the gate. Only the lawyers have card keys.’

Fairly typical building security. Not bad, but not good enough to keep a determined or clever bad guy from sneaking in. ‘Do you always work this building, or does METCO shift you around?’

‘Usually here. Occasionally I work other buildings. METCO’s got contracts with most of the big buildings in town.’

‘Were you here the night of December twenty-third?’

‘What do you want to know that for?’

‘A minute ago I asked you if anybody ever slips by you without signing in, and you said, “Not on my watch.” I wondered if your watch happened to include the night of the twenty-third.’

‘The twenty-third?’

‘Yes. The twenty-third.’

The guard stared at McCabe. After a long minute he said, ‘That would’ve been the Friday before Christmas?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Yeah, I was here. I worked a double that day. Traded with another guard so I could take Christmas off. Started at 4:00 p.m. Stayed on till eight the next morning.’

‘Long hours.’

‘Yeah, I wanted to be home with my kids on Christmas.’

Okay, he was a dad. Did that make him any more trustworthy? Maybe not. ‘Did you notice anything unusual that day, anything that sticks out in your mind? Think about it.’

Randall thought about it. He didn’t say anything for a minute. Then he nodded as if reconstructing the day in his mind. ‘The only thing unusual was all the people who left early ’cause of the holiday. A lot of ’em didn’t come back from lunch. Place was pretty much empty by five o’clock except for the big bosses, who all left together around six, six thirty. Most of ’em seemed pretty happy, gave me something for the holiday. Best as I can remember there were only a couple of late sign-outs. Usually a lot of folks work late.’

‘Who were the late ones that night?’

‘First one was one of the younger lawyers, Miss Goff. Real pretty woman. Fact is, I saw her a couple of times.’

‘When?’

‘First time was around eight o’clock or so. I remember ’cause she wasn’t wearing a coat and it was colder’n –’ Jackson stopped himself.

‘Colder’n shit?’ asked McCabe.

‘Yeah. Colder’n shit. Anyway, she didn’t sign out. She had a Federal Express envelope in her hand and said she’d be right back.’

‘Was she?’

‘Yeah. Two minutes later. Carrying a hot dog from the cart in the square. Must’ve been hungry.’

‘And the second time?’

‘She left for the night about an hour later. Around nine. Stormed out of here like hell wouldn’t have it. Must have been real pissed off about something. Didn’t sign out that time either. I called after her to come back. She just flipped me a bird.’ Randall smiled at the memory. ‘That was one angry lady.’

‘What’d you do?’

‘Nothing. I knew her. It was no big deal. She went out through the door that goes down to the lawyers’ private garage.’

‘That door there?’ He pointed to an unmarked gray steel door next to the main entrance.

‘Yeah. That one.’

‘Have you seen her since?’

Randall shook his head. ‘No. I don’t think so.’

‘You said there was another late sign-out?’

‘Yeah. Ten minutes or so after she left, Mr Ogden came down. Henry Ogden. He’s one of the senior partners at Palmer Milliken.’

‘Was he angry, too?’

Randall shook his head and shrugged. ‘No. He seemed okay. He looked like he always looks. Like a rich white guy. Handed me an envelope. Christmas card with a hundred bucks inside. Last year it was just fifty. Told me to get something nice for my kids.’

‘Anybody else leave the building after Henry Ogden?’

‘No.’

‘Working a double like that, Randall, any chance you might have dozed off and missed somebody else coming in and out?’

Jackson stiffened. ‘No. No chance at all.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘I’m sure. Only people to leave after Ogden were the regular cleaning crew. They get here around six and are usually outta here about one in the morning.’

‘How many people?’

‘Half a dozen, give or take.’

‘They have to sign in or out?’

Randall shook his head. No.

‘Same folks all the time?’

‘Not really. Company mixes ’em up. Specially around the holidays.’

‘They work for METCO?’

‘No, METCO just handles security. Some other company does the cleaning. You wanna know who, you’ll have to ask building management.’

‘You still have the sign-in sheets from that day?’

‘Not here. METCO might. I don’t know how long they hold on to them.’

‘Would anybody be there now?’

‘Nope. Office won’t be open till eight o’clock Monday morning. We’ve got a number we’re supposed to call in case of emergency. You want that?’

‘Yes.’

Jackson opened a drawer and pulled out a business card. He handed it to McCabe. The name on the card was Scott Ginsberg. He knew Ginsberg. He’d retired from the PPD’s Community Affairs Division two years earlier. Maybe there was life after leaving the force. His cell number was 555-1799.

McCabe pointed to a bank of small screens behind the desk. ‘How about your video. Are you recording, or is it just live?’

‘Recorded.’

‘Tape?’

‘No. Digital.’

Made sense. Digital meant there was no good reason not to record. The images could be fed right into a computer at METCO’s offices. Storage wasn’t a problem. Neither was the cost of videotape. There was no reason not to hold on to the images more or less forever. McCabe called Eddie Fraser and, after congratulating him on Tinker Bell’s rave reviews, gave him Scott Ginsberg’s number and asked him to start reviewing the video. ASAP. So far all they had was the body and the note. They needed more. Starting with a next of kin.

McCabe gave Jackson his card. Told him to get in touch if he thought of anything else. Then he asked him to call Beth Kotterman.

They exited the elevator at five. ‘My office is at the end of the hall to the right,’ said Kotterman. She led. McCabe followed. The corridor was dimly lit and empty. The air was cold.

Kotterman read his thoughts. ‘Heat’s programmed to go down to fifty at seven o’clock unless somebody calls to have it left on.’

‘Nobody working late tonight?’

‘I’m sure some of the lawyers are.’

‘No lawyers on this floor?’

‘No. Five’s mostly administrative. HR. Accounting. Office management. That sort of thing. We tend to be more nine-to-five types.’ She unlocked her office door and flipped on the lights.

As head of HR, Beth Kotterman rated a corner office. It was furnished in generic midlevel modern. Not what the partners would get, but a hell of a lot more comfortable than anything at 109. Kotterman had added a lot of touches that kept the place from being generically boring. A small jungle of indoor plants that included a ceiling-sized ficus dominated one corner. One wall was covered with family photos and a large crayon drawing titled Gramma Bethby. Bethby was wearing a bright green dress and had oversized feet and big glasses. The portrait was framed and carefully hung in a place of honor. It was signed BECKY.

Kotterman didn’t bother taking off her coat. She sat and pointed McCabe to a straight-back chair in front of her desk. The interview chair, McCabe guessed. ‘How old’s Becky?’ he asked.

Kotterman relaxed a little. ‘Seven now. She was four when I sat for the portrait. How sure are you that the body you found is Lainie Goff? The other officer, Detective Cleary, said you didn’t know yet.’

‘We’ve tentatively confirmed her identity from photographs,’ said McCabe. ‘We’re ninety-nine percent certain the dead woman is Elaine Goff.’

‘Not one hundred? It could still be someone else?’

‘I wouldn’t hold out much hope. We’ll do a dental records check to be absolutely certain, but I think you can assume it’s Goff.’

‘I’m going to have to let people in the firm know.’

‘That’s fine. Most of them probably already know. News Center 6 jumped the gun on that.’

‘That’s unfortunate.’

‘I agree. We always like to inform next of kin before they hear it from the media.’

‘Of course. And you think Lainie, assuming it is Lainie, was murdered?’

‘Yes.’

‘Odd.’ Kotterman looked away. ‘One doesn’t expect that sort of thing to happen in Portland, but I guess there are no safe places anymore. Maybe there never were. Any idea who did it?’