Darkness First (5 page)

‘W
ell, if it isn't Margaret Savage,' Emmett Ganzer said when they joined a small group of cops clustered a little way from the murder site. Ganzer didn't look happy to see her. ‘What brings you up here from the big bad city?'

‘Keeping the old man company, Emmett,' Maggie said. ‘How are you?'

‘Me? I'm fine. I'm always fine.'

‘Margaret Savage?' The question came from a good-looking man she hadn't met before. ‘Are you Detective Margaret Savage? Portland PD?'

‘Yup. That's me. Who're you?'

‘Sean Carroll. CID out of Ellsworth. I'm the lead on this investigation.'

Sergeant Sean Carroll. Maggie had heard the name before. Seen it in the paper too. Carroll had a reputation as one of the best investigators in the state. Only thirty-three and already rumored to be on the fast track to succeed Tom Mayhew as next lieutenant of the State Police Northern Division CID. He held out his hand. She shook it.

‘Nice to meet you too,' she smiled. ‘Most people call me Maggie.'

‘Okay, Maggie. This is Detective Scott Renzo and Bill Heinrich,' said Carroll. ‘Bill is head of our ER team.' ER stood for Evidence Retrieval. ‘Y'know, I've heard a lot of good things about you,' he added.

‘Really? I'm flattered.'

‘Don't be. You've got a damned good reputation as a homicide investigator. You and McCabe both. From what I understand, it's deserved.' McCabe was Detective Sergeant Michael McCabe, head of the Portland Police Department's Crimes Against People unit. Technically, Maggie's boss. More accurately, more importantly, her partner and friend. They'd worked together for nearly five years.

Maggie nodded her thanks and studied Carroll as he turned his attention back to Heinrich for a moment. Six-one or maybe six-two with a trim, muscular build and dark, curly hair cut a little longer than most cops would wear it. She found herself checking his left hand and noting the absence of a wedding band.

‘Mind if I take a look at the vic?' she asked.

‘It's not a pretty sight.'

‘I can handle it.'

‘I'm sure you can, but why?' Carroll looked at her through narrowed eyes. ‘Are you here for something other than just visiting your father?'

Maggie figured what the hell. Might as well leap in with both feet. ‘Yes. I'd like to work with your people on this investigation.'

‘Really?' Carroll sounded surprised. ‘What's your interest?'

‘Emily Kaplan, the woman hit by the getaway car, is my oldest and closest friend.'

‘Ahh. So you want to catch the guy who tried to kill her?'

‘I do. I also think I can add value to your investigation.'

‘Such as?'

Maggie shrugged. ‘I grew up in Machias. Still have a lot of contacts here. Plus Emily trusts me. She'll talk to me more freely than to any of your other detectives. Also, if you're coordinating your investigation with the Sheriff's Department, I'm obviously well connected there as well.'

Carroll nodded. Maggie felt his eyes, an almost startling gray-blue, study her as if there were no one else in the small circle of cops or for that matter anywhere else in the world. Just her. She felt them drawing her in.

‘Let's talk about this in my car,' he said, ‘I think it merits a private conversation.'

Carroll led Maggie to an unmarked gray Impala with state police plates. She got in the passenger side. He slid behind the wheel. They sat side by side in the dark.

‘You seem very intent on this,' he said.

‘I am.'

Carroll nodded, his eyes still on her. ‘You know normally if a detective with your experience and reputation volunteered to help in what could be a very difficult investigation, I'd jump at the chance to bring you in.'

‘But … ?'

‘But I have concerns.'

‘Such as?'

‘Such as whether your relationship with Kaplan will affect your ability to weigh the evidence objectively.'

‘I can promise you it won't.'

‘I'm not sure that's a promise you can keep. You do know we found a stash of illegal drugs, over a 150 Oxycontin tablets, in your friend's pocket?'

‘Yes, my father told me. I don't know why those pills were there,' Maggie said, choosing her words carefully. ‘But I'm sure Emily has nothing to do with buying or selling Oxycontin. Or with the murder of that young woman.'

‘Tell me something,' Carroll said. ‘If I say thanks for your generous offer, but no thanks, I have plenty of good people assigned, what would you do? Go home quietly? Or nose around on your own anyway?'

‘I'd have to think about that.'

‘But you might decide to play private eye? Work it on your own?'

‘I might.'

‘I need a more definitive answer than that.'

‘All right. The definitive answer is yes. I'd work it on my own. I'm not going to sit quietly by while some scumball takes a second shot at my friend.'

‘Even if I told you, warned you, that if you did that I might feel obliged to issue a formal complaint up the line, maybe as far as the Attorney General's office.'

‘I'd go ahead anyway.'

Carroll exhaled loudly. He turned away and stared out the window. Maggie hoped he wouldn't decide to punt.

‘How long are you here for?' he asked after what seemed like a long time.

‘I'm due back in Portland Tuesday morning. But since I just cleared the only case I was working on I'm sure I can stay longer if necessary.'

‘If I say yes, will you agree to report directly to me? Play by my rules and not go off freelancing on your own?'

Though she knew she wasn't being completely honest, she gave Carroll the affirmative answer she knew he required. If he stuck her out in left field just to get her out of the way, all bets were off.

‘Okay. Tell you what,' Carroll said, ‘we'll give it a shot. See how it goes until Tuesday, when you're due back in Portland anyway.'

‘That's not a lot of time.'

‘Consider it a free trial offer.' Carroll smiled and Maggie was struck again by the blueness of his eyes. They were quite intoxicating. ‘A chance to see how we get on together,' he continued. ‘If it works we'll take it from there. If not, no further involvement. No harm done. Fair enough?'

Maggie knew she wasn't going to get a better offer so she decided to play by Carroll's rules. At least until Tuesday.

‘Fair enough?' he asked again.

‘Okay. Fair enough,' she said.

They headed back and joined the assembled group. Maggie slipped a pair of paper booties over her shoes and continued down to where Tiffany Stoddard's body lay a few feet away from a rusty green Taurus.

V
iolent death had been Maggie Savage's stock in trade for a long time. Six years in uniform and eight more working homicide had brought her face to face with more of the dead than she cared to count or remember. Human beings stabbed to death, shot to death, bludgeoned to death and burned to death. Bodies torn apart in accidents. Bodies fished out of the bay, bloated and rotting from weeks in the water. Bodies lying naked and exposed on stainless steel tables awaiting the final indignity of the pathologist's blade.

Fourteen years of living with death and yet the first encounter with a victim as brutalized as Tiff Stoddard wasn't easy. One of the hardest parts was not letting her genuine feelings show through. As a woman she had to seem tougher than that to the guys she worked with, most of whom would see any honest display of emotion as further proof of female weakness. But the simple truth was she still took each death hard. Especially when the victims had their damned eyes open and were staring at her, or, as in the case of Tiffany Stoddard, one eye open.

The viciousness of Stoddard's killing seemed incongruous in the sweet cool air of an August morning. She was lying where she fell, in the middle of a pool of drying blood, bra hanging loose, pants pulled down, one eye battered shut, the other mirroring the horror of her last moments. Tiff's hands still clutched her nearly severed neck, her final futile attempt to keep her life from bleeding out.

Maggie squatted down and studied Tiff Stoddard's bruised and beaten face. Noted the cuts through her nostril and her lip. The cuts on her breasts. The shallow vertical cut down her middle. The bloody mess the killer's knife had made between her legs. Lips, breasts, vagina. A sexual sadist's work. Assuming his fun and games had been interrupted by Emily's appearance, had he been forced to finish fast by going for the jugular? Coitus interruptus? Sort of. She was sure Emily's unexpected arrival must have frustrated his sadistic desire, stoked his rage, his need to cause pain.

‘She probably wasn't his first.'

Maggie turned at the sound of Carroll's voice. She hadn't heard him approach.

‘Really? You've found others?' she asked, rising from her squatting position. ‘Cut up like this?'

‘Just one. Woman named Laura Blakemore. Body turned up third week in February.'

‘Who was she?'

‘Part-time waitress. Part-time drug dealer. Twenty-three years old. Attractive. At least she was before she was cut into pieces and stuffed into four heavyweight garbage bags, the kind they use on construction sites. The killer tossed all four into a dumpster behind a Wal-Mart in Brewer. It was only by accident she didn't end up as landfill.'

‘Who found her?'

‘Homeless guy rooting around in the dumpster for throw-away food. He opened one of the bags and saw Blakemore's severed head staring back at him through a layer of Saran Wrap. Poor bastard almost had a coronary. Anyway, he had enough sense to flag down a Brewer patrol car and we took it from there.'

‘Your case?'

‘Yes. One of the privileges of rank. I get to pick and choose what I work on.'

‘But you haven't found the killer.'

‘No. The investigation's still open.'

‘You attend the autopsy?'

‘Such as it was. More of a reconstruction project than an autopsy.'

‘Did she have cuts like these?'

Carroll shook his head. ‘Blakemore was in twenty pieces. There were cuts everywhere.'

‘Any other connection to Stoddard?'

‘Yes. Oxycontin. Blakemore was wholesaling Canadian 80s all over Penobscot County, mostly to small-time pushers. Maine DEA had her in their sights and was using her to connect the dots to her source of supply. Unfortunately, someone learned she was about to turn snitch and she ended up in the dumpster before providing any significant information. What I'm wondering is if Blakemore's supplier might not have been Stoddard. Or, admittedly less likely, Kaplan.'

‘It wasn't Emily.'

Carroll sighed. ‘Y'know, that's the kind of assumption that made me hesitate bringing you into this case. There
are
doctors who break the law. Sometimes easy money can be very tempting.'

Maggie decided not to argue the point.

‘Anyway, we know the origin of the Canadian product. You ever hear of Saint John?'

‘I assume you mean the city and not the apostle?'

‘That's right. The city. Saint John, New Brunswick. Up until this winter selling Ox in Maine was mostly a mom and pop business. Phony prescriptions for thirty tabs. People with legit prescriptions making a few bucks selling their leftover pills. Very occasionally somebody would bring in a few hundred tabs from out of state. Until this year almost all Oxycontin sold in Maine was manufactured by Purdue Pharmaceuticals in the US.'

‘Then what?'

‘Last January that all changed. Forty thousand tablets with a street value of nearly five million dollars were stolen from a big pharmaceutical distribution center in Saint John. Within weeks, Canadian tabs, CDN stamped right on them, started showing up all over the state. Our DEA guys say they've got to be from Saint John. Our neighbors to the north claim we're just blaming them for our drug problems.'

‘Even though the pills are obviously Canadian?'

‘Even though. They say the thieves in Saint John were two local kids arrested previously for dealing. They tried to get away by water and capsized their kayak. Their bodies washed up down the coast a couple of days later. Both were positively identified from surveillance videos which show them killing a security guard and taking off with the goods in a small duffle bag.'

‘The drugs didn't wash up with them?'

‘Never found.'

‘How about the kayak?'

‘That turned up a couple of days after the bodies. A bag was still in the storage compartment containing their wallets and a Glock 17 with one of the kids' prints on it. Two shots fired. Definitely the same gun that killed the security guy.'

‘A little neat, isn't it?'

‘I agree. But the Canadian cops insist the drugs sank to the bottom of the Bay of Fundy. Or maybe washed out with the tides. DEA says that's nonsense. Far too many “CDN” tabs turning up in Maine for it to be anything else.'

‘So somebody else brought the drugs back to Maine. A third man?'

‘Yeah. Except what if the third man happened to be a woman?'

‘Stoddard?'

‘Possibly. She's roughly the same age as the kids who killed the guard. Maybe they were in on it together. Let's say she's on a boat.'

‘A getaway boat?'

‘Why not? The boys kayak out, toss the drugs on board and she takes off. They try to paddle back to shore. But it's the Bay of Fundy and they're fighting an outgoing tide. Eventually they capsize. She comes home and opens her candy store. Hires Blakemore as a helper.'

‘Only one problem with that theory.'

‘Yeah? What?'

‘Tiffany Stoddard didn't commit suicide and she sure as hell didn't sexually mutilate her own body. And Emily Kaplan didn't drive a car into herself. So who did?'

Carroll shrugged. ‘I don't know. My guess is a would-be competitor who decided to take over her business. What you might call a hostile takeover.'

‘Very hostile,' agreed Maggie. ‘Same guy who killed Blakemore?'

‘I think so. Same guy. Same motive. Blakemore was the first step on the distribution ladder. Let's say he uses her to work his way up to Stoddard. He kills her. Then he tortures and kills Stoddard. Forces her to tell him where the rest of the goods are. Kaplan's just collateral damage.'

Maggie nodded more to herself than Carroll, uncertain if his takeover theory made sense. What she was sure of was that whoever killed Stoddard didn't do it just for the drugs. Or the money. Maybe as a male, Carroll didn't feel the sexual nature of the attack as sharply or deeply as she did. Or maybe he thought hunting down a sexual deviant complicated his otherwise straightforward drug investigation. ‘Can you get me copies of the case files on Saint John?' she said. ‘Both ours and the Canadians? Also the file on Blakemore?'

‘I'll have somebody deliver a set to your father's office later this morning. We're setting up temporary headquarters there. Saves driving back and forth to Ellsworth.'

‘Also can you put a trooper on Emily's room at Eastern, Maine. Once the bad guy figures out she isn't dead …'

‘Yup. Got it. I'll take care of it,' Carroll said before Maggie finished the sentence.

‘Okay. Good. In the meantime what do you want me to do?'

‘First thing? Go to Eastport and inform Stoddard's next of kin. While you're there find out whatever you can about her, including where she was in January. Specifically the sixth through the eighth.'