Текст книги "The Chill of Night"

Автор книги: James Hayman

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Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

Ten

Harts Island, Maine

Saturday, January 7 12:10 A.M.

The fireboat slowed noticeably, and the officer at the wheel began maneuvering it alongside a wooden dock. When he had it in position, one of the firefighters leapt onto the dock and secured the boat fore and aft to a pair of steel cleats. McCabe could see a black-and-white PPD Ford Explorer waiting by the landing. The department’s slogan, painted in gold on the SUV’s rear fender, had been changed from PROTECTING A GREAT CITY TO PROTECTING A GREAT ISLAND. Two cops were keeping themselves warm inside. One was in plainclothes. McCabe guessed Bowman hadn’t bothered changing back into uniform before returning to the island.

Maggie and McCabe walked up from the dock to the car, and Bowman climbed out to greet them. He was a big man, maybe six-two, with an athlete’s stance and body. No hint of a paunch in spite of his age, which McCabe figured for just south of fifty. He had a hard face with blotchy red skin, maybe from the cold, maybe from booze, or maybe it was just blotchy. He sported a short, neatly clipped mustache. He was dressed in faded blue jeans and a lined windbreaker with a fake fur collar. He had his badge pinned to the windbreaker. There was no weapon strapped around his waist, and McCabe guessed he was wearing a shoulder holster under the jacket. Probably liked playing detective.

Maggie made the introductions. ‘Scotty Bowman, Sergeant Mike McCabe.’ The two men shook hands. The officer in the SUV lowered the driver’s side window and waved. ‘Mel Daniels,’ he called out. Daniels looked too young to be a cop. He had a soft, almost feminine face and an open, eager expression. McCabe calculated backward. Since today was Friday, Daniels wouldn’t have been on duty Tuesday night. Cops assigned to the island worked fire department hours. Twenty-four hours on, twenty-four off, another twenty-four on, then five days off. McCabe and Maggie climbed into the back of the Explorer. The car felt warm enough to suggest it’d been running awhile. Maybe looking for Quinn. Daniels turned the vehicle around and started up the hill away from the landing. ‘You guys found our witness yet?’ asked McCabe.

There was a short, tense silence before Bowman sighed. ‘No. Not yet. We don’t know where she is.’

‘You don’t know where she is?’ McCabe repeated. He hadn’t realized how pissed off he was about that. ‘That’s great, Bowman. That’s just fucking great.’

The island cop turned in his seat and held up his hands, palms out. ‘Hey. We’ve been trying to find her since nine thirty when I got back to the island. But like I told Maggie on the phone –’

For the second time in ten seconds Bowman had rubbed McCabe the wrong way. ‘Just for the record, you didn’t tell “Maggie” anything on the phone. You told Detective Savage. You got that straight?’

The red-faced cop eyed McCabe cautiously. He didn’t like being corrected, especially not in front of a junior officer, but they both knew there wasn’t a whole lot he could do about it. ‘Fine,’ he said, his voice flat and unfriendly. ‘I told Detective Savage we checked Quinn’s house. She wasn’t there. Her mother, a woman named Grace Quinn, said she hasn’t seen her daughter since Tuesday. However, since Gracie’s usually blind drunk, she probably hasn’t seen much of anything since Tuesday. We also talked to Lori Sparks, the owner of a restaurant called the Crow’s Nest where Abby waits tables.’

McCabe knew the place. He and Kyra and Casey had all made a mess eating lobsters out on the deck one evening last summer. Gorgeous views of the bay and the sun setting down behind the Portland skyline. ‘Quinn hasn’t been there since Tuesday either. Lori was pissed ’cause it left her shorthanded. Friday’s her busiest night.’

‘Have you tried calling her cell phone?’

‘Yeah. Half a dozen times. Message keeps kicking in right away. Like it’s turned off. Or out of power.’

McCabe took out his own phone and punched in some numbers. ‘This is McCabe,’ he said. ‘Hold on a sec.’ Then, addressing Bowman, he asked, ‘What’s Quinn’s number?’ Bowman gave it to him, and McCabe repeated it to the woman who picked up at the PPD Comm Center. He asked her to try to pinpoint the phone’s current location, and no, he didn’t know who the service provider was.

Daniels pulled the Explorer into a parking space in front of the small brick building that housed the Harts Island police and fire stations, a branch of the Portland Public Library, a community room, and the only public restrooms on the island.

‘Have you looked anywhere else?’ asked Maggie. ‘Maybe she’s hiding out with friends.’

The young cop turned to face them. ‘There aren’t a lot of people who hang out with Abby. Not the way she is now. It’s too tricky. I checked with a couple of her classmates, our classmates, from high school. The ones who are still on the island. Like me, they remember Abby the way she used to be. A totally different person.’

‘You and Quinn were in the same class?’ asked Maggie.

‘Yeah. Portland High. Class of ’99.’

‘The classmates haven’t seen her either?’

‘No. Not since Tuesday. Neither has the guy who tends bar at the Nest. Young guy, twenty-one or twenty-two, named Travis Garmin.’

‘Anybody out searching the island?’

‘Just getting started,’ said Bowman. ‘The other cop on duty tonight, a guy named Sonny Cates, is out organizing a search party. Mostly people who work city services plus some of the volunteer firefighters. Planning to round up eight or ten in all.’ The island was only a little over two square miles. McCabe figured ten locals could cover it quickly and effectively without bringing in outside resources.

‘We’ll find her,’ Bowman said flatly.

McCabe stared in the dark at the back of Bowman’s head. It was as if Bowman could sense frustration pouring across from the backseat. ‘Listen, McCabe,’ he said, turning around, ‘we handled this right. I handled it right.’

‘You don’t think you did anything wrong?’

‘No. I don’t.’

McCabe nodded and climbed out of the vehicle. The others followed. He threw an arm around Daniels’s shoulder. ‘Why don’t you go on inside,’ he said softly. ‘Detective Savage and I need to have a private chat with Officer Bowman.’

Daniels looked from face to face, probably feeling like the kid being sent out of the room so the grown-ups could talk. Still, he didn’t object. He just walked to the station, unlocked the door, flicked on the lights, and went inside. McCabe waited until the door swung shut, then turned to Bowman. ‘You had a witness to a murder sitting right in your lap.’

The cop’s eyes narrowed. ‘No. I didn’t,’ he hissed. ‘What I had was a psychotic nutcase jumping around my station, screaming her fuckin’ head off.’

McCabe kept his own rising anger under tight control. ‘Abby Quinn may be a psychotic nutcase,’ he said. ‘I don’t know about that. What I do know is that, even agitated and probably terrified, she was cogent enough to provide an accurate description of, one, the murder weapon, two, the MO, and, three, the victim. Details nobody else knows anything about. And what do you do? Nothing. You assume she’s gone off her meds and let her slip through your hands. You’re an experienced cop, Bowman, with what, twenty years in the department? And you didn’t even bother getting her the medical attention you told Detective Savage you thought she needed. If you’d done that, at least we’d have her in a safe place. Instead, you just drove her home. The very first place the bad guy would go looking. Let’s just hope we find her before he does, if he hasn’t already. Shit, Bowman, I’ll bet you didn’t even record what she said, did you?’

Bowman said nothing, so McCabe continued. ‘That’s what I figured. So now, four days later, not only do we not have any idea where our witness is, we don’t even have an accurate record of what she said. In fact, thanks to you, we don’t have bupkis. In case you haven’t been to New York lately, that’s Yiddish for goat-shit.’

Bowman stood facing McCabe on the cold, empty village street, his eyes slits, his hands clenched into fists, the distant glow of a streetlamp accenting his features in an irregular pattern of light and shadow. Two alpha males, facing off, with nothing between them but the whoosh of an icy wind sweeping in off the bay.

Bowman blinked first. ‘We’ll find her,’ he said again. ‘If she’s still on the island, we’ll find her.’

McCabe remembered the ferry they passed on the way in. ‘Let’s hope she is,’ he said, ‘and let’s hope we do. Because if she’s not, she could be anywhere. Like stuffed into the trunk of a fancy car. Stabbed, stripped naked, and frozen solid.’ McCabe felt Maggie’s hand on his shoulder, squeezing gently, bringing him down, urging him toward the building.

‘Let’s go inside,’ she said, ‘or we’ll all be frozen solid.’

Eleven

McCabe had never seen the Harts Island cop shop before. There wasn’t much to it. Up front was a small office space outfitted with a desk, a couple of chairs, a police radio, an all-in-one printer/scanner/fax machine, and a pair of computers. One was an aging desktop model, the other the sort of silver laptop usually found mounted in PPD units. Daniels was sucking on a Coke, his butt planted on one end of the desk. Behind him, through an open doorway, McCabe could see a second room. He walked over and glanced in at a small, sparsely furnished break room, dominated by a grubby-looking brown couch with worn, nearly threadbare arms, a pair of puke green vinyl chairs, and a circular coffee table, littered with out-of-date magazines and a few paperbacks. A wooden staircase rose against the wall to the left. McCabe knew the island cops kept cots upstairs so they could catch some sleep during their long twenty-four-hour shifts. There was an office-sized fridge topped with a coffee setup under the stairs. To his right, a fuzzy-looking Red Sox game flickered away on a TV in the corner. Had to be a replay. The Sox didn’t play in January.

As McCabe turned back from the doorway, he spotted a small stack of color photos lying on the desk. ‘Quinn?’ he asked, picking them up.

‘That’s her,’ said Daniels. ‘We found them at her mother’s house.’

McCabe studied the pictures, three in all. In the first, Abby was standing on the rocks by the shore, smiling at the camera, a big, healthy-looking girl with a generous figure and a face full of freckles. Probably still a teenager when the shot was taken. Waves crashed behind her, and the wind was sweeping her long reddish brown hair down over one eye in an unruly mass. McCabe never would have called Abby pretty, but she was still appealing in that open, outdoorsy way so common in Maine. She wore a sweatshirt with a picture of a strong-looking woman flexing a muscular right arm. Under the picture were the words GRRRRL POWER! McCabe smiled. A Harts Island feminist.

The second photo showed Abby standing in the stern of a lobster boat. She was clowning for the photographer, who must have taken the shot from the end of a pier or maybe from a second boat a little ways away. She wore a plaid flannel shirt and a pair of the orange waterproof overalls that seemed mandatory for anyone lobstering in Maine. She was holding a big lobster, maybe a five-pounder, by the tail and pretending to be frightened by the creature writhing at the end of her arm.

‘How old is she?’ McCabe asked.

‘My age,’ said Daniels. ‘Twenty-four or twenty-five. Like I said, we graduated Portland High the same year.’

‘Were you friends?’ asked Maggie.

‘Not particularly. The island kids mostly hung together. My folks lived in Portland, so I wasn’t part of their crowd. But I do know that Abby in high school was a totally different person from who she is today.’

In the third picture, she did indeed look like a different person. So different the photo might have been used as the ‘after’ shot in a before-and-after demonstration of the toll mental illness takes on the human spirit. She looked thirty, maybe forty pounds heavier and at least ten years older. Her hair hung lank and lifeless. Her eyes were clouded by a joyless empty expression, and there were dark circles under them. Her skin looked pasty and almost gray. One hand was up, trying to shield her face, as if to say, Please don’t take a picture of me. Not like this.

‘Is this recent?’ McCabe asked, holding it up, before handing the stack to Maggie.

Daniels shook his head. ‘No. Probably taken after her last stay at Winter Haven. About a year ago. That’s her mother’s cottage in the background. I’ve got a feeling Gracie didn’t have enough sense or sensitivity not to take a picture of Abby looking like that.’

‘Is it how she looks now?’ he asked.

‘Well, she’s not as fat now – twenty, thirty pounds less – and she’s washing her hair. Looks more normal. Chubby but normal. The last time I saw Abby was about a week ago going in to work at the Nest. She looked almost happy.’

McCabe slipped the photos into his breast pocket. ‘You don’t mind if I borrow these?’ he asked. Nobody did. He glanced over at Bowman, who was sitting in a swivel chair, his eyes locked on McCabe’s, one leg mounted on the desk. A few chunks of ice had fallen from his boot and were melting into small pools on the fake wood surface. ‘You know out there?’ he said. ‘If you were worrying that your killer’s gonna hunt Quinn down to eliminate a witness, you can relax. I don’t think that’s likely.’

‘Really?’ McCabe studied him. ‘Any reason for that? Or just your natural optimism bubbling to the surface?’

Bowman ignored the sarcasm. ‘A couple of reasons. Starting with your assumption Quinn actually saw the murder take place –’

‘Not a bad assumption, Scotty,’ Maggie interjected. She was leaning against the door, arms folded across her chest, the photos of Quinn still in one hand. ‘A knife to the back of the neck is a pretty specific detail.’

‘It is, Detective Savage.’ Bowman laced the last two words with a heavy dose of his own sarcasm. ‘But isn’t it at least possible Quinn only saw the body after the fact? A naked woman. Dead. With a small wound in her neck. Don’t you think seeing that might’ve freaked her out enough to push her into making up the rest? Hallucinating it. Or imagining it. Or whatever the hell else you call what schizophrenics do when they’re stressed.’ Bowman looked pleased with his hypothesis.

McCabe shrugged. ‘Slightly tortured logic, but I suppose it’s possible.’

‘Oh yeah? Tortured in what way?’

‘Well, if that’s how it happened, where, exactly, is the killer while your schizophrenic is discovering the body? Hiding in a closet? Wandering around outside in the cold, waiting for her to finish freaking out so he can go back up and collect the remains? Or maybe he’s just over at the Crow’s Nest having a beer? Like I said, possible. Just not very likely.’

Bowman sighed in reluctant agreement. ‘Okay. But even if we assume Abby did catch the killer in the act, even then he probably didn’t see her face.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Maggie. ‘She saw his face. Why wouldn’t he see hers?’

‘Because,’ Bowman announced, ‘she was wearing a mask.’ He smiled with grim satisfaction, like an athlete savoring a meaningless point scored in the last seconds of a losing effort.

Maggie gave him a questioning look. ‘What kind of mask?’

‘A cold weather ski mask. Y’know, the kind that covers your face with holes cut out for the eyes, nose, and mouth. It was blue. Sort of an imitation Spider-Man design. She was still wearing it when she came to the station.’

What if Quinn was wearing a mask? McCabe thought about the implications of that as Maggie and Bowman continued their back-and-forth.

‘She was wearing this mask because . . . ?’ asked Maggie.

‘She was out jogging that night. The winds on the backshore can be brutal on bare skin, and I guess it was part of her gear. Anyway, when she passed the Markhams’ cottage –’

‘That’s the crime scene?’

‘Yeah. As she passed she saw candlelight in one of the windows. Since it’s one of her houses –’

‘What do you mean, her houses?’

‘Abby makes a few bucks keeping an eye on some of the summer cottages for the owners. She has keys to all of them. This was one of them. According to Lori Sparks at the Nest, she takes the responsibility seriously. I guess that’s why she went in to investigate.’

McCabe’s eyes, narrowed almost to slits, bored in on Bowman. ‘Wouldn’t she have taken the mask off when she went inside?’

‘I don’t think so. She had it on when she got here, and she kept it on. I couldn’t tell who she was, and I had to ask her twice to take it off. She finally did, but only reluctantly, and even then she wouldn’t let go of it. I think she saw it as some kind of whatchamacallit, a talisman or something.’

McCabe’s mind played with the possibilities. If Abby was wearing a mask when she saw the murder, if the killer couldn’t see her face, as Bowman suggested, it changed the dynamic of what they were doing. ‘You’re sure Sonny Cates didn’t tell the searchers why they were looking for Quinn?’ he asked. ‘He didn’t say anything about her witnessing a murder?’

‘No,’ said Bowman. ‘He couldn’t have. Like I told you, he didn’t know that himself. All I told Cates was that Quinn was missing and we needed to find her. In fact, that’s all Daniels knew till we went to pick you up off the boat.’

Okay, that was good. ‘How about her mother and the people at the Crow’s Nest?’

‘Same thing. I just asked them if they knew where Abby was, they said no. Travis Garmin told me to try her cell number. He knew it by heart. We did. Got no answer.’

McCabe walked to the window and peered out at the dark street. Snow was beginning to fall. Small hard flakes, not the fat fluffy ones he preferred. He let the idea of the mask perk around in his brain for a minute or two. Clearly they had to find Quinn ASAP, either here or on the mainland. At the same time, they didn’t want to put Quinn’s life in danger by letting the killer know who it was who had barged in on the murder. He thought about classifying Abby as a confidential police informant, a CI. That way they could legally keep her identity secret pretty much indefinitely, or at least until the discovery phase of a trial, if this thing ever got that far.

McCabe’s only problem was that this particular CI was missing, and it was going to be a hell of a lot harder to find her if they couldn’t tell anyone who they were looking for. No. Formal CI status wouldn’t work. They had to play it both ways. Tell people who they were looking for when they had to, but under no circumstances tell anyone why. At least Bowman hadn’t screwed that up yet.

McCabe took out his cell and tapped in Starbucks’s number. The PPD’s resident computer brain, Starbucks’s real name was Aden Yusuf Hassan. A Somali kid, he’d arrived in Portland back in 2000, in the city’s first wave of Sudanese and Somali refugees fleeing genocide in their own lands. When he started working for the department a couple of years later, the cops dubbed him Starbucks because of his addiction to strong coffee. The name stuck. Starbucks had never touched a computer in his native country, but he learned fast. He was a natural. One of the best McCabe had ever seen.

His mother picked up on the third ring. ‘I’m afraid Aden is not at home, Sergeant,’ she said in heavily accented English. ‘He’s out for the evening with a friend.’

McCabe thanked her, said he hoped he hadn’t woken her up, and tried Starbucks’s cell. ‘Yes, Sergeant.’ Starbucks was shouting over loud music. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘Sorry to break up your night on the town,’ McCabe shouted, ‘but I need you to get over to 109 now.’

‘Oh.’ Disappointment in his voice. ‘Okay.’ Pause. ‘That’s fine.’ The voice brightened up. ‘I’ll have to apologize to my friend and take her home first.’

‘Apologize for me, too.’

‘I will, but not to worry, Sergeant, the job comes first. What can I do for you?’

‘I’m having three photos of a woman e-mailed to you. When you get to the office, take the one where she looks old and fat. Photoshop about thirty pounds off of her. Then take the other two and add maybe five years. Could you hear all of that?’

‘Yes, Sergeant,’ Starbucks shouted back. ‘I hear you very well.’

‘Good. When you’re done, send the photos to Cleary’s computer.’

‘Is he at 109?’

‘He will be soon.’

Maggie started to ask a question. McCabe held up a finger, signaling her to wait. He called Cleary.

‘Hey, boss, you solve the murder yet?’ Nearly one in the morning and Cleary was still full of beans and ready to take on the world. That was good. McCabe needed somebody aggressive on this.

‘Not yet,’ McCabe told him. ‘The canvass turn up any results?’

‘Not yet either. We’re still working it.’

‘Tell Tommy I’m pulling you off.’

‘Yeah?’ Cleary sounded surprised. ‘Why? Whaddaya need?’

McCabe filled him in on everything they had learned so far, including the fact that Quinn couldn’t identify the killer and that the killer might not be able to identify Quinn.

‘Does the bad guy know she couldn’t ID him?’

‘No. Which is why we need to find her before he does. As quick as we can. Without letting people know why we’re looking, and without using her name any more than we have to. Otherwise we could have another corpse on our hands.’

‘Jesus,’ said Cleary, ‘this is all kinda weird.’

‘Yeah, kinda. Anyway, Starbucks is working on some pictures. By the time he’s done with them they ought to be pretty good likenesses. I want you to send out a confidential ATL to all of our units plus every other department in Maine, plus the staties both here and in New Hampshire. Get someone to check with all the taxi companies in town. And cover the train and bus terminals. She might head there. Trailways has a 3:15 A.M. departure to Boston.’

‘Who goes to Boston at three in the morning?’

‘I don’t know. Just make sure Quinn’s not one of them. Also check for early departures out of the Jetport.’

‘Nothing’s gonna be flying out of there for a while. Not with this snow coming in.’

‘Probably not, but tell our guys to keep an eye open anyway. If I were Quinn I’d be running as far and fast as I could.’

‘Yeah, but you’re not crazy. She have a car?’

‘I don’t know. Check that, too. See if there’s one registered in her name. Or maybe her mother’s. Grace Quinn. Same Harts Island address.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Yeah. Call my cell when you’re done.’

McCabe hung up.

‘You know, McCabe,’ Bowman snorted, ‘you’re tryin’ to keep this so damn hush-hush – but what about Quinn herself?’

‘What about her?’

‘Your witness has no control over her own mouth. She’s probably out there right now blabbing her head off.’

McCabe shrugged. ‘Yeah. She might be. Nothing we can do about that. But hey, maybe nobody’ll believe her. You know. The rantings of a psychotic nutcase and all? Now I’d like you to stop worrying about that and take me through the rest of what happened Tuesday night.’

‘You pretty much know it all. She came here. She ranted. She raved. Then I took her home. End of story.’

‘You visited the crime scene afterward? Isn’t that right?’ he asked.

‘Yeah, I did. It’s a fancy backshore cottage right across the road from the water. Belongs to some banker type from Boston. Guy named Todd Markham.’

‘Everything look normal to you?’

‘Yep. I went through every room, including the master bedroom, which is where she says it happened. I saw nothing out of place. No weapon. No body. No blood. Not where she said it was and not anywhere else.’

‘On the other hand, you weren’t expecting to see anything out of place, were you?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Just that if there was something not quite right there, if you weren’t expecting it, it wouldn’t be surprising if you didn’t see it.’ McCabe knew all too well how expectations create their own reality. How they cut off even a smart cop’s ability to consider other possibilities – and Bowman wasn’t all that smart. ‘Let’s just hope you didn’t destroy any evidence.’

‘I didn’t.’

‘How’d you get in?’

‘The door was open.’

‘Front door? Back door?’

‘I went in the front.’

‘How about Abby?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Was the back door locked?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘No signs of B&E?’

‘No. I told you. Abby had a key. She let herself in.’

‘Yeah, I know. You told me. Abby had a key. How’d the killer get in?’

Bowman’s brow knitted. ‘I don’t know.’ Pause. ‘I hadn’t thought about that.’

He hadn’t thought about it because he was so damned sure Quinn made the whole thing up.

‘You guys have Markham’s number in Boston?’ asked McCabe.

‘We can get it.’ Daniels woke the desktop computer from its sleep and began tapping keys. He wrote some numbers on a Post-it note. McCabe nodded at Maggie, who nodded back, took the Post-it, and disappeared into the back room to check on Todd Markham’s whereabouts Tuesday night.

‘Abby couldn’t describe what the bad guy looked like?’

‘No. Just a lot of craziness that didn’t make any sense.’

‘Like what exactly?’

‘You really want to know?’

‘Yeah.’

‘She said he looked like a man from the back, but when he turned to look at her he was a monster. Let me see if I can remember her exact phrases. “A fiery fiend. An evil animal face. Icicles for eyes.”’ There was a nasty mocking tone to Bowman’s voice.

McCabe let it pass. ‘Maybe he was wearing a mask as well.’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Bowman. ‘Abby’s a whacko. She hallucinates. That’s all her description of a monster was. A hallucination brought on by the stress of the moment.’

‘What did she do after she saw the murder?’

‘Not clear, but I think she turned and ran. There were footprints broken into the ice and snow leading to and from the front door. All messed up like they were made by someone running fast. Looked to me like they were all Abby’s. In one spot it looked like she took a fall.’

McCabe glanced out the window. It was snowing even harder than before.

‘Todd Markham says there is a key to the back door. It’s hidden inside a lantern on the exterior wall next to the door,’ said Maggie, coming back into the office. ‘I asked him who knew it was there. He said half the island. Plumbers. Electricians. Anybody who ever worked on the house when the Markhams weren’t there. By the way, Markham was in Chicago Tuesday night. Says he had dinner with a couple of clients. Stayed at the Hyatt. Didn’t get back to Boston till –’

McCabe nodded. ‘Okay. Tell me about Markham’s alibi later. Right now I need you and Daniels to get over to his house. Photograph and preserve any readable footprints before the snow out there covers them up. You guys have any plastic sheeting here?’

‘No sheeting,’ said Daniels, heading toward the rear of the station, ‘but we’ve got a bunch of tarps out back.’

They piled the tarps into the back of the Explorer, along with metal tent pegs to secure them, a digital camera, and a couple of lights. It wasn’t perfect, but it’d have to do.

The front door opened just as they left. ‘Jeez,’ said Sonny Cates, stamping snow off his boots, ‘it’s colder’n a witch’s tit out there.’ He was a round, jolly-looking guy with white hair. Santa Claus without the beard. He pulled off his glove. ‘Mike McCabe, right?’

McCabe waited at the window until the Explorer pulled out before nodding and taking Cates’s extended hand. ‘Any luck?’

‘Nah. Not yet.’

‘Take me through what you’re doing.’

They walked over to a large laminated aerial map of the island pinned to one wall. An erasable marker was hanging next to it. ‘Basically, I divided the island into six more or less equal sectors.’ He drew a red line horizontally across the center of the island, then two vertical ones. ‘Assigned a team to each.’

‘Communications?’

‘All the teams have cell phones.’

‘How’s the reception?’

‘Sketchy. Some places okay. Some places nonexistent. Two of our teams have trucks with radios. I put them in the areas where cell reception’s worst. We’re checking outdoor areas first. In this weather, if she’s stuck outside, she’s gonna be in trouble pretty quick. We’re also checking the old bunkers here, here, and up over here.’ Cates pointed to three places on the map. ‘You know about the bunkers?’

McCabe did. During World War II, North Atlantic convoys sailed in and out of Portland harbor, and the army made Harts a key element of Portland’s shore defenses. Concrete bunkers and observation posts were still dotted all over the island. Some had been converted into garages, storage sheds, and summer houses. Others were simply abandoned. One, Battery Victor, was big, dark, and empty, with multiple rooms and plenty of hidey-holes.

‘How about the empty summer houses? The ones she had keys to?’

‘So far, visual inspection only. Snow makes it easy to see if anyone’s been marching up to them.’

‘Anything suspicious?’

‘Other than deer tracks, not so far. Just around the Markham place, which is here.’ Cates pointed to a spot on the map. ‘This new snow’s gonna cover everything up pretty quick, though. Then we’ll have to start calling the owners and looking inside.’

‘Anybody ask why we’re looking for her?’

‘Just told them she’s missing and we’ve got to find her. They all know she’s got mental problems and tried suicide twice, so nobody’s asking too many questions.’

They saw headlights pulling up outside. Maggie and Daniels were back.